The Lovely Bones 2009

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Jackson overwhelms the thoughtful, introspective nature of the material with whistles and bells -- heavenly effects that scream "overkill." Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Sometimes a major director becomes enthralled with the cinematic prospects of material for which he is not ideally suited. Read more

Tom Charity, CNN.com: Jackson seems more at home in the afterlife than in this one, rendering this off-kilter project creepy and pretentious. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: Jackson's film takes us on a journey of loveliness, but without the hard, stark strength of bone beneath it to give it the direction and purpose Sebold used to drive her story into the heart. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The result is dumbfounding and ludicrous in equal measure, a too-muchness that makes the excesses of What Dreams May Come seem downright spartan. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: There was no reason to make this book into a film -- and many reasons not to -- so you have to admire Peter Jackson for trying. Unfortunately, he's the wrong director for the job. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: For all its successes, Bones remains more crafted than sincere, more meant to look achingly pretty on the screen than to resonate in the heart. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: It's a competently made movie -- in Jackson's hands it could hardly be anything but -- yet rarely a moving one. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The miscalculation on almost every level is perversely thorough. It's as if the filmmaker, faced with an endless series of daunting creative choices, proudly took the wrong road each and every time. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Everything that's good is undermined by an overemphasis on one part of the story that is essential but has been allowed to overflow its boundaries. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's best-selling novel hovers just this side of Ghost Whisperer kitsch but remains compulsively watchable. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: This is a distractingly busy movie, so in love with its own considerable craft that it can't stay still long enough for anything to settle in. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: The movie is often wise. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Understand, the film still has power, just not as much as it should. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: In Jackson's simplified, sweetened, and 
CGI-besotted telling, The Lovely Bones is a sad-but-hopeful, dramatic-but-gentle fairy tale intentionally made less upsetting for teens. Read more

David Germain, Associated Press: Jackson crafts lovely but ineffectual dreamscapes of the afterlife that eviscerate much of the human side of the story. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Alice Sebold's evocative best seller proves to be more unfilmable than Tolkien's sprawling fantasy trilogy - a disappointment, yet it's impossible for anyone to do it better Read more

Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News: Most often, Jackson's magical other world resembles the land of Oz on steroids or, in one scene, a feminine hygiene ad. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: A movie that has been tinkered and fussed with until there is no spontaneity left -- no warmth or life or messiness. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The Lovely Bones has been fashioned as a holiday family movie about murder and grief; it's a thoroughly queasy experience. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Jackson is too enamored with the idea of mixing heaven and the heebie-jeebies, so he's made the skeevy equivalent of a Mitch Albom book with some pulp fiction pressed between its covers. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Color me relieved. There is no need to fear death, even the most horrifying kind of murder. Because the afterlife is exactly like the album cover for a 1970s progressive-rock band. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: The New Zealand director's trademark recipe of fantasy, realism and computerized visual effects turns The Lovely Bones into a thrilling adventure. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Tonally, visually, conceptually, The Lovely Bones is all wrong. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Despite significant cuts and instances of condensation, the plot's skeleton tracks well with Sebold's book, but therein lies the roots of a problem: the movie features wild swings in tone and fails to draw the viewer into the story. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Loved the book by Alice Sebold. Admired the bold effort by Peter Jackson, even if the otherwordly scenes sometimes miss the mark. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The Lovely Bones is a deplorable film with this message: If you're a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer, you have a lot to look forward to. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The novel never flinched, the movie does. But Jackson, who builds jolting suspense when Susie's sister enters the killer's lair, is drawn to a spiritual dimension. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: With his garish, pointless and downright inept rendering of Alice Sebold's 2002 novel, The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson has hit a new low in the annals of movie adaptations. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The Lovely Bones is difficult viewing, a meticulously crafted experiment that, it turns out, wasn't worth it. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Scene by scene, the movie alternates between prurient violence and sentimental uplift. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Rarely has a film launched by a killing seemed so insistently alive. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: So much about The Lovely Bones is so skillfully orchestrated, from the chillingly methodical villainy to the thrillingly paced manhunt, we can accept that we're in the hands of a higher power. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Some books should stay between their covers, and The Lovely Bones may well be one of them. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: Jackson's grand, computer-generated vision of Susie's Dali-like "in between," while occasionally gorgeous, leaves the viewer feeling stuck between two worlds, too. The story suffers. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: When else has the obscenity of child murder been the cause of such gravity and grace? Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out: Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: The real let-down is its heavy reliance on overblown special-effects sequences to represent the celestial limbo. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The movie strikes clashing tones, veering from lightheartedness to heavy-handedness. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Jackson undermines solid work from a good cast with show-offy celestial evocations that severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Part Disney's Alice in Wonderland, part Fritz Lang's M, the movie is horrific yet cloying, alternately distended and abrupt, sometimes poignant and often ridiculous. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Tone is the first thing sacrificed in this shapeless, overlong, mawkishly muddled pop-up illustration of a movie. Read more