The Lovely Bones

Out on DVD this week, is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Based on the reviews and the poor box office sales, it’s one of the worst movies everyone has ever seen. I’m not sure exactly why everyone else hated The Lovely Bones, but I’ll tell you why I did.

(Warning: This is where I would say “spoiler alert”, but since the real spoiler is actually seeing the movie, I’ll call this the “saver alert.”)

The Lovely Bones is a movie about Susie Salmon, a 14-year-old girl, who is murdered by her neighbor. This isn’t a spoiler. We know from the very beginning who the murderer is. How do we know? Because over footage of her neighbor, our murdered narrator says, “That’s my murderer.”

Before Susie gets murdered, the only thing she wants in the whole world is to kiss this guy who just moved to town, who I’m pretty sure is 30 years old and gay, but we’re supposed to believe is 16 and straight.

He asks her out on a date, so it looks like she’s gonna get that kiss, but then on her way home from school, she’s murdered. Woops.

At that point, she goes to the land in between Earth & Heaven, which is a forest where she befriends the other girls who were murdered by the same guy. They’re supposed to take her to Heaven, but she wants to stay and help her family catch her killer. So she tries to send clues to them from Limbo. And it works because they begin to suspect the neighbor.

There is one really good sequence in the film where Susie’s sister breaks into the murderer’s house and finds evidence that he is the killer. While she’s digging around in his house, we can see that he’s about to come home, so you can’t help but want to scream, “Get out of the house!”

When he gets home, he catches Susie’s sister. But she’s a track star, so she runs away. (Boy, am I glad they spent the time setting up the fact that she knows how to run. Otherwise, I would have never believed she could get away from him).

Anyway, the murderer now knows that she has evidence against him, so what does he do? He decides to leave town. He packs up everything, including a trunk that contains Susie’s (lovely) bones in it.

He goes to this junkyard where there’s a sinkhole to dump the trunk, but when he gets there, it’s closing time and they tell him to come back tomorrow. He’s a very persuasive guy (murderers always are, right?) so he gives them some cash and they agree to take the trunk.

While this is going on in the real world, Susie is finally enjoying being dead.

As she plays tag in a field with the other murder victims, one of them asks, “Are you ready?” which means “Are you ready to go to Heaven now?”

Susie looks behind her at the real world and sees that a storm is brewing (literally).

She stops suddenly and says, “Not yet.”

At this point, I’m thinking, Awesome! This is what I’ve been waiting for. She’s going back to Earth to help get this guy arrested.

But, I was mistaken.

You see, right next to the sinkhole is a cabin and the guy she likes is there hanging out with this other girl. Susie magically gets into the girl’s body to make out with her crush as the trunk with her (lovely) bones disappears into the abyss. She’s so busy kissing that she forgets to mention that her body and killer are just a football field away.

That’s right. This girl would rather kiss a boy than solve her own murder. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I’m glad she’s dead. One less stupid girl in the world. Natural selection helps eliminate idiots like that from procreating.

The worst thing though is that because Susie was horny, her murderer is able to drive away freely and murder other girls.

Of course, there’s an epilogue for people like me who are disgusted by Susie’s poor decision-making skills.

A few months later, he scopes out a potential victim at a snowy, mountainside rest stop. The girl tells him to leave her alone. After a scuffle, she gets away. Flustered, he stands near the ledge of the mountain. Just then, an icicle hanging from a tree above falls, hits him in the head, knocks him over the cliff and he dies. The end.

This ending was so ridiculous I thought this couldn’t have been how the best-selling book that captivated readers really ended. Quickly, I went on wikipedia to read the plot of the novel and lo and behold, that is exactly how the book ends.

Here’s one thing the movie failed to mention. Between the time of dumping Susie’s (lovely) bones and being killed by an icicle, he did kill another girl.

I wonder what Susie told that girl when she met her in limbo.

Susie: Hey, I coulda totally stopped that guy from ever killing again, but like, there was this really cute guy that I just had to kiss, you know? Anyway, sorry. My bad.

Murdered girl: Oh, that’s cool. I understand. I would have done the same thing. Was it a good kiss, at least?

Susie: Nah… I’m pretty sure that guy is gay.