Bonehead

Just as pundits compile assessments of the millennium’s first movie decade, The Lovely Bones arrives to remind them that Peter Jackson perpetrated the biggest goof in millennial history: the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Like each of those over-scaled, unintelligible, miraculously over-hyped fantasy films, The Lovely Bones demonstrates geek sensibility run amok. Jackson applies his interest in feverish imaginings to the already histrionic conceit of Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel. And as with J.R.R. Tolkien’s intricate, philosophical epic, Jackson flattens Sebold’s sensitive, sometimes dubious, ideas about girlhood, nostalgia and death into more elfish nonsense. Read more