Directed by Peter Jackson. Starring Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, Saoirse Ronan. Thriller, USA/NZ/UK, 135 minutes.

Director Peter Jackson loses his footing badly with this hit-and-miss and overly sentimental adaptation of Alice Sebold’s bestselling novel, considered something of a high-wire act when published in 2002. Written as therapy after Sebold was raped at university, it tells the tale of 14 year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) who, after being brutally raped, murdered and dismembered, watches from heaven as her family, friends – and George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), the serial killer responsible – try to go on with their lives. Eventually, with spiritual help from Harvey’s other child victims, she comes to terms with her own death and escapes the melancholy limbo she’s been confined to for decades. Unfortunately Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens’ script focuses more on the vengeance aspects of Sebold’s tale rather than the healing ones and the result is more an interesting failure than another HEAVENLY CREATURES, the movie in Jackson’s past it most resembles. Originally to be directed by Lynne (RATCATCHER) Ramsay, and starring Ryan Gosling as pop Jack Salmon (his replacement Mark Wahlberg no great substitute), the material probably needed a more realistic grounding than the whimsical one Jackson initially provides. Having said that, the 30 minute lead up to the PG-13 off-screen rape and murder, is the best part of this WHAT DREAMS MAY COME meets M sorry affair. Once Susie enters her dreamscape indeterminate state and floats around the WETA workshop’s garish ideas of what lies in store on the road to paradise (think YELLOW SUBMARINE’s Pepperland) the bearable slickness becomes astonishing slackness. Whalberg elicits nothing more than stunted emotion in what is supposed to be one of the keys to Susie’s revenge redemption. Rachel Weisz as mom Abigail Salmon barely registers, her important extra-marital affair in the book vaguely hinted at. Grandma Susan Sarandon is a total OTT joke, while Rose McIver as Susie’s devastated sister Lindsey has the only true moment of suspense – when she enters the killer’s lair and is nearly caught. But even DISTURBIA did those scenes much better. Quite why Tucci, as the world’s most cliché child killer, is actually attracting awards talk is stupefying. How could he not have been a suspect right from the word go acting the way he does?  Giving a remarkably sensitive performance though is Saoirse Ronan. The ATONEMENT girl is the glue holding this mercurial mess together. Just. Only she captures the mournful lyricism of Sebold’s fable, a quality that in Jackson’s surprisingly clumsy hands has become a mere contrivance.

Alan Jones

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THE CRITIC-AL LIST
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

Alice In Wonderland
The Crazies
Case 39
The Wolfman
Legion
The Lovely Bones
Black Death
Daybreakers
Avatar
The Stepfather
Ninja Assassin
The Descent: Part 2
Amer
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Box
2012
Disney's A Christmas Carol
The Horseman
Solomon Kane
Pandorum
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
District 9
An Education
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra
Orphan
A Perfect Getaway
The Imaginarium Of
Doctor Parnassus
Up
Harry Potter
And The Half-Blood Prince
The Taking of Pelham 123
Transformers
The Revenge Of The Fallen
Antichrist
Terminator Salvation
Last House On The Left
Inglorious Basterds
Angels & Demons
Adventureland
Star Trek
Crank: High Voltage
Coraline
Dragonball Evolution
Let The Right One In
Drag Me To Hell
Race to Witch Mountain
Knowing
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Not Quite Hollywood
Lesbian Vampire Killers
Martyrs
The Children
Surveillance
Watchmen
The Unborn
The International
Friday The 13th
Franklyn
Push
Punisher:War Zone
The Uninvited
Amusement
The Good The Bad And
The Weird
Hush
Underworld
The RIse OF The Lycans
My Bloody Valentine
Bolt
Slumdog Millionaire