The Lovely Bones is based on Alice Sebold's bestselling novel, but unfortunately fails in every way that the book triumphs. It's is the story of Susie Salmon, a 14-year old girl who after being brutally raped and murdered, watches over her family (and murderer), seeing how her death has affected them. In the book, we get to deeply experience these characters, their emotions, thoughts, and attempts at coping in the face of tragedy. However, the film decides that character development is not as important as "symbolic" imagery (which will, without a doubt, alienate about 90% of its audience), and a gumdrop-colored CGI heaven. If I could sit down with Peter Jackson, and just really discuss this movie to see what was going through his head when he wrote the screenplay, I would ask him this: why, oh why is your "vision" of heaven a cotton-candy, flower-power CGI explosion? I just find so much humor in the fact that he calls this his "vision"...he obviously read the book, since he adapted it. Well let me tell you something: In the novel there was no snowy mountains or explosions of colors in Susie's heaven. Susie's heaven was high school. Imagine that. A recently murdered 14 year olds inner dreams and desires came together to form her heaven, an experience that most young girls get to experience and grow from: high school. To me, thats a lot more meaningful than what Jackson did. Maybe he forgot what he was directing. This is not Lord of the Rings. The imagery didn't need to be fancy...it just needed to be heartfelt. Instead almost all the heart that the story had was sucked out and thrown away.
Leap Year, one of the first romantic comedies of 2010, is a charming (yet expectedly predictable) movie that starts the year off on the right foot. Anna (Amy Adams), has her perfect life planned out, the last piece to her puzzle being a ring on her finger from her handsome, heart-surgeon boyfriend, Jeremy. When once again she is disappointed after expecting a proposal, she spontaneously decides to surprise Jeremy at a conference he's at in Dublin, her plan being to take advantage of a local tradition in Ireland which states that a woman can propose to her boyfriend on leap year. After an emergency landing due to weather turbulence delays her arrival into Dublin, she meets an Innkepper, Declan (Matthew Goode), who offers to give her a ride.
When you see a cast like Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin all together in the same movie, you have to be at least a little intrigued. I know I was, which is why I chose to go see It's Complicated on its opening day. The premise is about a lonely, divorced woman (Meryl Streep), who finds herself in the unlikely (yet very comical) situation of starting an affair with her now married ex-husband (Alec Baldwin). The film is directed by Nancy Meyers, a director who has given us some of the most delightful romantic comedies of recent times such as 'The Holiday", "Somethings Gotta Give", and "What Woman Want". It's Complicated, unfortunately, doesn't meet the standard of these other films in my opinion. While it is at some points very funny, the humor is much more silly than clever...much of it relying on the age of the three leads to get its laughs: "look, the middle-aged people are smoking pot!" "Look, the middle-aged people are having sex!" I guess seeing the stature of the cast, and the hype surrounding the movie, I expected a little more. Nevertheless, while the script might not be all that I wanted it to be, the three leads elevate it from mediocrity to quite a fun and enjoyable movie-going experience.