Lovely Bones or How I was Suffocated by Symbolism

I read the book Lonely Bones a year ago, and had no desire to see the movie because the book was painful enough to get through.  As most people know, it is a story narrated  by a 14-year-old heaven bound girl who was brutally raped and murdered by a pedophilia serial killer.  Call me weak, but when my daughter and son-in-law wanted to see it at the Arc light theater in Hollywood (super comfortable theater with seats made to take a nap in) my other daughter and I reluctantly joined them. Low and behold, I knew I was in trouble when the usher announced that the movie was two and a half hours long!  The whole book only took that long to read, and that's with crying breaks in between.  

There is nothing entertaining about a fourteen year old girl being brutally murdered, but we all had hopes that visual effects maestro Peter Jackson would make this an unforgettable, spiritual experience. What it turned out to be, was a cross between Law and Order and Fantasia, never sustaining a constant mood. The movie kept vacillating between the murder and the afterlife, never satisfying either side.  Visually it was wonderful, if you don't mind seeing the same scenes over and over, with copious slow motion shots.  The mind was ready to move on, but the camera kept lingering on the crystal beaches, foggy forests, leaves falling from trees, and every heavenly, visual possibility you could imagine.  The visual imagination superseded any element of the human story thread.  Just as soon as you are starting to digest the mystery solving and get a glimpse into what the characters are feeling, you are taken to the bright, glitzy and fluffy afterlife.  You go from morose to fantasy on one big emotional roller coaster, never feeling anything but confused the whole time. The good news is that you don't really feel sad, because you spend most of the time telling yourself how ridiculous it is.

Luckily, we saw this movie two weeks ago, during a limited engagement, and it is not set for release until next week.  I feel obligated to warn as many people as possible to not waste 2 1/2 hours of their life watching one of the most depressing, emotionally manipulative movies of all time.  Ghost Story it's not!!!!