The Lovely Disappointment of books turned into feature films

The Lovely Bones written by Alice Sebold
I read this when I was in high school and loved it, I'd always mentioned it to people in search of a book recommendation. It tells the story of Susie Salmon at age 14, she is a perfectly normal girl who gets raped and murdered by a sketchy neighbor and then she watches down on the world she left for the remainder of the novel. It's beautifully written and original, at first the idea of this is terrifying, reading this as a young girl, thinking oh my God this stuff actually happens. However, the rest of the book makes up for it, Susie's heaven is so imaginative and the story of how her family continues is so honest. Alice Sebold gives you a 'fly on the wall' perspective of how the death of a child affects a family for years to come. This is one of my favorite books and when I heard it was being made into a movie I was thrilled and when I found out Peter Jackson (also the mastermind of Lord of the Rings & King Kong) was directing it I was even more psyched to see it. It came out in 2009, it stars Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz (ugh) and Stanley Tucci. This movie was such a disappointment, it is the worst movie made from a book I've ever seen. Now, I like to give filmmakers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to turning print into picture, I think of it in the perspective that they are two completely different art forms. The movie is just the directors interpretation of the book. I understand they can't live up to every little detail and I am forgiving of that most of the time. This however I find completely inexcusable. I have always adored Peter Jackson and had much higher expectations.

The only redeeming qualities were Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci, everyone else was a joke. I don't even want to mention their names, that's how disappointed I was in the casting. Now I wouldn't have chosen Mark or Stanley for the roles they were given either, but they did what they were supposed to do...act. Susie has an annoying breathy voice that is so hard to get past, Ruth & Ray Singh, the strange duo of Susie's classmates were just reading lines, grandma was overacted, the sister was boring and Susie's mother was played way too safe. Guilt, shame, sorrow, restlessness, and grief were the characteristics that made her a tormented soul and in the movie she plays a one dimensional middle aged woman who you don't identify with, such a shame to let a great role fall so flat.

The killer was spot on, not too overdone, not too camoflagued in the neighborhood, just right. He looked like he should have looked, he talked like he should have talked. He was evil and mundane at the same time, easily looked over by the rest of the neighborhood, but once looked at it was made abundantly clear he was a twisted man. The scene where he shows Susie his secret basement room he's built under the cornfield, where she is raped and murdered, is incredibly uncomfortable to watch. I think it's very weird that this is the one scene that's done well. This is also how you feel as reading this in print, you think I don't want to be here, this is out of my comfort zone, this is wrong, and you can do so by putting the book down, walking away, taking a smoke break and coming back later. Susie doesn't have this luxury though, she is helpless, harmless, innocent and naive, that is what makes this book so tragic. I think Alice Sebold is one of those authors who has to go to beat you over the head with what's going on to get her point across, now I realize authors must do this, but there's a certain way to do it. And when you're talking about rape you don't want to freak out your reader. I also think some of the parts they put in the movie were completely unneccessary. I don't think they should have gone into so much detail about how he killed the other girls, I think either just mentioning it some different way or leaving it out all together would have been more effective, they did not need to give you a visual of where these girls were killed and show you dead bodies. Not that they are mutilated or gorey or even scary but it's just disturbing that they went to lengths to plan that scene out the way it was.

Susie explains her heaven very vividly, but what should have been breathtaking was so obviously computer generated, and done in such a bad way that these scenes looked like those stupid 80's posters teenage girls would hang on there walls with unicorns on them. Now some parts of her heaven didn't give me the same thoughts, some were done very well like the woods or when she's walking up to the lighthouse those were beautiful, but a few small parts of pretty film don't keep me from being so very disappointed. So in case you feel like watching a movie that had so much potential but instead you find yourself holding back vomit, this one's for you!Farewell for now & happy viewing!