Peter Jackson steps to the plate with his first movie since King Kong (not LotR as I stated in my Fall Movie Review). And just as King Kong was pretty universally panned, so too is The Lovely Bones a bit of a swing and a miss. This film, based on Alice Sebold’s novel, is the story of a young murdered girl who watches the world go on without her. The problem with the film is that all the story happens in the first 30 minutes. Susie Salmon is a great character and while she is alive, things really move. But once the protagonist enters the afterlife, she basically just becomes a narrator. The characters that are left are boring and without a protagonist’s arc, the film just grinds to a halt. This is a fundamental structure problem that should have been addressed. That being said, I loved Saoirse Ronan as Susie and can see a serious career unfolding for this girl. Many have complained about the CG heavy visuals but they completely worked for me. It is the afterlife after all and the dreamy scenery reminded me of the wonderful alien-world-in-your-mind imagery in Contact. In the end, I can’t help feeling that while this might have worked well as a novel, as a film it suffers from some serious adaptation woes.