The Lovely Bones
DreamWorks SKG | Release Date: December 11, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
42
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
19
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
As someone new to the material, I found Jackson’s film soulful, respectful, masterful, horrifying, rending and emotionally true. It may not be the Lovely Bones that you have in mind, but it’s a fine and powerful one. Read full review
80
EmpireIan Freer
Like “The Lord Of The Rings,” The Lovely Bones does a fantastic job with revered, complex source material. As terrific on terra firma as it is audacious in its astral plane, it is doubtful we’ll see a more imaginative, courageous film in 2010. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
All this is conveyed in the remarkable performance of Ronan, an Oscar nominee for Atonement. She and Tucci -- magnificent as a man of uncontrollable impulses -- help Jackson cut a path to a humanity that supersedes life and death. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
Yet 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 full review
70
TimeRichard Corliss
When else has the obscenity of child murder been the cause of such gravity and grace? Read full review
63
New York PostKyle Smith
It's all a gorgeous error, a bonfire of overreach. Read full review
63
Orlando SentinelRoger Moore
Though properly chilling when it’s supposed to be, it’s a film whose effects, script and performances keep it at arm’s length when it is supposed to be moving. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
It’s a movie that tips toward overkill--even Ronan’s voice is amplified into a weird whisper. More quiet would have helped. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderAndrea Gronvall
Hovers just this side of "Ghost Whisperer" kitsch but remains compulsively watchable thanks to its smart ensemble cast Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
A sad-but-hopeful, dramatic-but-gentle fairy tale intentionally made less upsetting for teens. Read full review
50
NewsweekDavid Ansen
How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Jackson and his team tell a fundamentally different story. It's one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details. But it's also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The Lovely Bones has been fashioned as a holiday family movie about murder and grief; it’s a thoroughly queasy experience. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
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 full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
The filmmakers’ evident affection for the book expresses itself as a desperate scramble to include as much of it as possible, which leaves the movie feeling both overcrowded and thin. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
If The Lovely Bones, at least for this critic, fails, it's certainly not for lack of metaphysical gumption...It's when the movie returns to earthly life, the prosaic world of suburban cul-de-sacs and family relationships, that it falters. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Some books are not meant to be adapted to the big screen. Alice Sebold's best-selling The Lovely Bones falls into that category. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
By turns warmly sentimental, serial-killer sinister and science-fiction fantastical, The Lovely Bones was an unlikely book to achieve worldwide success. In the film version, those mismatched elements come back to haunt the story, so to speak, making the final product more hit-and-miss than unblemished triumph. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
As the murderer, Stanley Tucci is intensely creepy but, like almost everybody else in this movie, he’s more gothic figment than flesh and blood. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The story told by Jackson's The Lovely Bones is the same as the one related by Sebold, but it lacks the complexity and empathy evident in the book. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill Goodykoontz
It's a competently made movie - in Jackson's hands it could hardly be anything but - yet rarely a moving one. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Jackson has not cast himself well, though. He has slathered the imagery in the wrong kind of wonderment and hyperbole, both on Earth and in heaven. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The Lovely Bones is difficult viewing, a meticulously crafted experiment that, it turns out, wasn't worth it. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
The book floats sublimely above its dark theme; the movie sinks into the ridiculous. Read full review
40
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Jackson undermines solid work from a good cast with show-offy celestial evocations that severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
I watched the film in an agitated space between engrossed and aghast. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
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 full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Ronan, however, transcends the script. She's innocent yet wise, gentle yet forceful. She's the one thing in this picture that shows how great a movie The Lovely Bones might have been, had the people who made it believed in the book with all their hearts. Read full review
38
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The result is almost suffocating: a movie that has been tinkered and fussed with until there is no spontaneity left -- no warmth or life or messiness. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
It doesn't help any that Wahlberg, looking perpetually dumbstruck, is among the clunkiest line-readers working in movies today. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
How the devastating story of the senseless murder of a 14-year-old could be stripped of emotion is a feat in itself, though one of dubious achievement. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeTy Burr
The Lovely Bones, then, is something special: A spectacular, cringe-inducing failure as both a book adaptation and a film. Read full review
25
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
It leaves audiences in a limbo every bit as torturous as the one the protagonist is in. Read full review
20
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
In Jackson's hands, The Lovely Bones is doubly appalling. 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 full review
20
SalonStephanie Zacharek
A perfect storm of a movie disaster: You've got good actors fighting a poorly conceived script, under the guidance of a director who can no longer make the distinction between imaginativeness and computer-generated effects. The result is an expensive-looking mess that fails to capture the mood, and the poetry, of its source material. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Peter Jackson siphoned out all the soulfulness that made the author's combination thriller/afterlife fantasy a best-seller. In its place is a gumball-colored potboiler that's more squalid than truly mournful. Read full review
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