The Lovely Bones (2009) Peter Jackson

The Lovely Bones (2009)is based on the best selling novel of the same name by Alice Sebold. Typically, it was said to be unfilmable because the 14 year old protagonist dies early in the book, murdered by her paedophile neighbour and spends a lot of time flitting and flirting about heaven and earth with the boy she might have loved, given a chance. Unfilmable means that a cardboard set with the wind moving the props that stand in for heaven-lite will not work. What is needed is money to build a proper heaven, a girl, in this case the delightful Saoirse Ronan, playing Susie Salmom can jump from and narrate what happens next to her dad Mark Wallenberg and her mum, Rachel Weisz –who shows heaven comes in brunette forms- and others that have touched her life. So what does happen next? The paeodophile murderer gets his come-uppance from the cuddly toys. Rachel goes to live on a potato farm, boy was I glad when she came back. And Mark gets set up by the creepy neighbour. Other things happen, but the most important thing was it brought Rachel home. But she might have been coming home anyway. It was a lovely book, which I really liked and quite a nice looking film.