A dead 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), murdered on her way home from school in 1973, tells her story from heaven in The Lovely Bones. In doing so, Susie follows the narrative path set for her in the striking 2002 novel by Alice Sebold on which this much-awaited adaptation by Peter Jackson is based. But as directed by the lord of The Lord of the Rings from a screenplay by Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, his bleached Bones bears little resemblance to the book in either tone or complexity. Readers will be frustrated; newcomers to the story may wonder why what is now essentially a serial-killer thriller includes so many scenes of a heaven that looks like a gumdrop-colored hobbit shire, a magical place of fanciful special effects. 
 
 In Jackson's simplified, sweetened, and CGI-besotted telling, The Lovely Bones is a sad-but-hopeful, dramatic-but-gentle fairy tale intentionally made less upsetting for teens. (There's no indication that Susie gets raped, as she does in the novel, and her murder occurs off screen.) Atonement's terrific Ronan, with her astonishing glacier-blue eyes, watches from a scenic afterlife as her father (Mark Wahlberg), mother (Rachel Weisz), younger siblings, and selected friends simultaneously heal from their loss and search for her killer. For comic relief, the family's boozy granny (Susan Sarandon) arrives, swathed in mink. Apparently participating in a burlesque movie, Sarandon camps it up, demonstrating terrible housekeeping skills and wreaking grande-dame havoc. 
 
 As for the killer, he's in plain sight from the beginning  a creepy neighbor (Stanley Tucci) with the hopeless comb-over and furtive mustache of an easy-to-spot perv. Tucci is jolting in the role, honestly unsettling as he maintains an exterior of mildness that masks a grotesque interior. Electrifying danger accompanies his every scene. But this in itself becomes a problem, as that same energy leaves the screen when he does. Jackson reduces his Lovely Bones, in the end, to the dramatic contrast between the menace of a hateful killer (will he be caught?) and the grief of a loving father (can he avenge his daughter's death?). Sebold's Lovely Bones, on the other hand, is fleshed out with the perilous, irresistible power of sex  the author acknowledges a real world of extramarital sex and sex between young lovers in addition to the heinous rape from which moviegoers are shielded. The filmmaker handled the sexual power of girls beautifully in 1994's Heavenly Creatures. But here he shies from the challenge, shortchanging a story that isn't only about the lightness of souls in heaven but also about the urges of bodies on earth. Jackson forfeits depth for safe, surface loveliness. C+ 
 
 See all of this week's reviews ||||| 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.It wasn't only the bestselling nature of Alice Sebold's novel that made "Bones" one of the most anticipated films of the year. It was the participation of director Peter Jackson and his regular screenwriting collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, the team that had a considerable triumph with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.And Jackson is successful re-creating parts of this story told by a 14-year-old girl who is savagely murdered in 1973 and then watches for years from a kind of in-between state that she calls "the blue horizon between heaven and earth" as her friends, her family and her killer go on about their lives.His best move by far was casting young Irish actress Saoirse Ronan , Oscar-nominated for her compelling role in " Atonement," as the murdered Susie Salmon. An enormously gifted performer, Ronan is the only element of the film that is exactly as it should be, bringing naturalness, honesty and radiance to the part of a young woman just on the cusp of life.Other elements, including "The Lovely Bones' " imaginative notion of what Susie's afterlife looks like, are strong, but everything that's good is undermined by an overemphasis on one part of the story that is essential but has been allowed to overflow its boundaries.That would be the film's decision to foreground its weirdest, creepiest, most shocking elements, starting with the decision to give a much more prominent role to murderer George Harvey. Expertly played by Stanley Tucci, so transformed by makeup as to be almost unrecognizable, Harvey is such an unsettling, toxic individual that the actor says he came close to turning down the role.It's not only Harvey that we see in sometimes grotesque detail, it's the bizarre decorations of the underground murder site that we watch him ever so carefully plan and build, as well as the realistic bodies of his previous victims. And there is of course the chilling time the family spends trying to solve Susie's murder.Though it's unfortunate, this focus will not be a shock to those who know Jackson's films. The director (visible in an amusing cameo examining a movie camera in a shopping mall) began his career with a fondness for splatter-type material with titles like "Bad Taste" and "Braindead." It may even be that the chance to fool around with this kind of stuff on a more high-tone level was one thing that drew the filmmaker to the novel in the first place.But though it can be argued that these things, or versions of them, are key points in the novel, seeing them on the screen plays differently, disturbing the story's balance. If Sebold's ultimately soothing novel had focused this much on its off-putting aspects, it never would have found the huge audience it did.Because the book was such a major success, "The Lovely Bones" pretty much had its choice of actors for key roles, and in selecting two strong performers, Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz, as Susie's father, Jack, and mother, Abigail, both devastated in their own ways by their daughter's death, the film undeniably chose well.But though both actors have their moments, the film's erratic mixture of emotional tones, its decision to go back and forth from missing-Susie sadness to serial-killer sadism, undercuts their ability to give resonant performances.Also hamstrung, but for a different reason, is Susan Sarandon as Grandma Lynn, who's been encouraged to be too over the top for anyone's good.One element of the film that is consistently involving is the dreamscape look of the in-between world where Susie spends her time watching her murderer scheme, her sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) grow up and her parents fall apart. A field of barley that changes into a rolling ocean, huge versions of the ships-in-a-bottle that were her father's hobby, roses blooming under frozen lakes, they all speak to a world, created by New Zealand's Weta Digital and beautifully shot by cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, that is particular to Susie but special to us all.Though "The Lovely Bones" never overcomes its tendency to push things too hard, there are moments, almost invariably involving star Ronan, that resonate with the book's comforting notion of a sentient afterlife. To hear Susie speak the novel's signature lines about "the lovely bones that had grown around my absence" as she comes to terms with "the world without me in it" is to feel what we've been wanting to feel for a long time. It's also to wish that the entire film were as effective as these best moments, but that was not to be. ||||| A typical teen: Until Susie (Saoirse Ronan) is killed by her neighbor and left watching her family from the "in-between." 
 
 ABOUT THE MOVIE ABOUT THE MOVIE The Lovely Bones 
 
 * * (out of four) 
 
 Stars: Saoirse Ronan , Stanley Tucci , Mark Wahlberg , Susan Sarandon , Rachel Weisz 
 
 Director: Peter Jackson 
 
 Distributor: Paramount Pictures 
 
 Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language 
 
 Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes 
 
 Opens Friday nationwide Some books are not meant to be adapted to the big screen. TRAILER: Get a taste of Peter Jackson's adaptation of the bestselling book Alice Sebold's best-selling The Lovely Bones falls into that category. The novel, told from the perspective of a murdered 14-year-old girl, is chilling and poetic. It can't have been easy to adapt because of its reliance on the musings of a dead, omniscient narrator. But a device that works on the page comes off artificial and emotionless on-screen. The movie strikes clashing tones, veering from lightheartedness to heavy-handedness. It's hard not to have high expectations of director Peter Jackson after TheLord of the Rings. And given his haunting Heavenly Creatures (1994), about teenagers and murder, he would seem the right filmmaker to adapt this book. But the scenes that take place in an alternate universe — a way station between heaven and Earth — are jarring. Depicting heaven has long stymied directors, and Jackson's cheesy computer-generated world breaks no ground. Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) is well-cast as the wide-eyed Susie Salmon, who has a passion for photography, loving parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) and a crush on a high school senior (Reese Ritchie). Walking home from school, Susie is lured into an underground lair by the nebbishy George Harvey (Stanley Tucci). Tucci gives a nightmare-inducing performance as the neighbor whose pleasantries are almost as scary as his violent predilections. Jackson gets the thriller scenes right. He sets up a tense sequence in which a detective (Michael Imperioli) and Harvey eye each other through the windows of a dollhouse. Susie's sister, Lindsey (Rose McIver), is suspicious and sneaks into Harvey's house to find evidence in a suspenseful episode. But the conceit of Susie trapped in a DayGlo world between the one she left and her final resting place, imparting lessons on coping with death, feels preachy. It's more moving when she utters simply: "I was here for a moment, and then I was gone." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more ||||| How does one make a PG-certificate film about the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl? Director Peter Jackson provides an answer of sorts with The Lovely Bones, which leaves the murder unseen and the rape unmentioned. 
 
 The Lovely Bones Production year: 2009 Countries: Rest of the world, UK, USA Cert (UK): 12A Runtime: 135 mins Directors: Peter Jackson Cast: Jake Abel, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Imperioli, Nikki SooHoo, Rachel Weisz, Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon More on this film 
 
 His reward is a blushing mainstream entertainment that was tonight deemed fit to be introduced to polite society at a royal premiere in Leicester Square. Our reward is anyone's guess. 
 
 The drama ushers us through the afterlife of Susie Salmon (Atonement's Saoirse Ronan), a small-town kid in 1970s Pennsylvania who is killed by the local pervert (Stanley Tucci) and looks down on her scattered, shattered family from her place in limbo. She sees her mum (Rachel Weisz) flee the coop and her dad (Mark Wahlberg) come apart at the seams. From this celestial vantage, she starts to fear for the safety of her little sister (Rose McIver), whose jogging route leads her regularly past the killer's suburban home. 
 
 It's not that The Lovely Bones is a bad movie, exactly. It is handsomely made and strongly acted, while its woozy, lullaby ambience recalls Jackson's work on the brilliant Heavenly Creatures, before he set forth on his epic voyage through The Lord of the Rings. 
 
 Here, he audaciously conjures up heaven as designed by a teenage girl – a kitsch spread of sunflower fields, spinning turntables and the sort of airbrushed waterfalls that could have spilled straight off an Athena poster. All of which is entirely fitting, and often captivating. The problem, though, is that The Lovely Bones also gives us a real world as designed by a teenage girl. The land that Susie leaves behind is so infested with cartoon archetypes and whimsical asides that, at times, it scarcely feels real at all. 
 
 Might the fault lie with the source novel? Alice Sebold's best-selling book similarly held up Susie Salmon's innocent fancies as a kind of talisman to ward off evil. It dared to spin a sentimental fantasy out of a grisly tragedy, offsetting the tang of sulphur with the sweet taste of candyfloss. The difference was that Sebold's novel was not scared to look the central horror in the face. This ensured that it at least part earned its subsequent flights into the ether. 
 
 The screen version, by contrast, is so infuriatingly coy, and so desperate to preserve the modesty of its soulful victim that it amounts to an ongoing clean-up operation. 
 
 Gone is the dismembered body part that alerts the family to Susie's fate. Gone is her anguished mother's adulterous affair with the detective who leads the case. Gone is all mention of what really transpired in that lonely 1970s cornfield. Is this really the best way to secure a crime scene and retrieve the victim? Jackson turns up with his eyes averted, spraying cloying perfume to the left and right.
– Peter Jackson's crafts a fantastic vision of the afterlife in The Lovely Bones, say critics, but some feel it came at the expense of the human side of the story of a murdered teen, adapted from the book by Alice Sebold. "By turns warmly sentimental, serial-killer sinister, and science-fiction fantastical, The Lovely Bones was an unlikely book to achieve worldwide success," Kenneth Turan writes in the Los Angeles Times. "Those mismatched elements come back to haunt" the film version, "making the final product more hit-and-miss than unblemished triumph." "Sebold's Lovely Bones is fleshed out with the perilous, irresistible power of sex—a real world of extramarital sex and sex between young lovers in addition to the heinous rape from which moviegoers are shielded." But Jackson "shies from the challenge, shortchanging a story that isn't only about the lightness of souls in heaven but also about the urges of bodies on earth," writes Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly. "Through Jackson's art" and the magic of star Saoirse Rogan, Richard Corliss writes at Time, "the obscenity of child murder has been invested with immense gravity and grace." "Some books are not meant to be adapted to the big screen," and The Lovely Bones is one of them, writes Claudia Puig at USA Today. What works in the book, she writes, comes off as "artificial and emotionless on-screen."