I didn’t bother reading any of the premature Lovely Bones posts yesterday because I find the idea of a teaser for a trailer to be quite silly. But now that we’ve been able to see the whole spot (via Apple), let’s talk about it. Personally, I was really excited for Peter Jackson to return to something more Heavenly Creatures than LOTR with this adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best -seller, but I’m pretty disappointed with the afterlife stuff here.

Maybe it’s because of the Alice in Wonderland trailer. Maybe it’s because of the derivative premise of Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch. Maybe it’s because it looks a lot like What Dreams May Come. But I enjoyed that movie, at least for the visuals, so perhaps I should just accept that Jackson was unfortunately not going to do more clay people, a la the fantasy sequences from Creatures, and focus more on the real-world stuff.

Well, aside from thinking these scenes also don’t look that original or interesting (is it a spoiler that we’re shown the murderer?), I’ll probably see the movie for Stanley Tucci alone. Others may be concentrating on Mark Wahlberg’s wig, but I’m all about Tucci’s appearance here. Sure, I’m all about any actor who does the comb-over/mustache combo, but we all have our things that draw us into a movie.

See what the other film blogs are saying about the trailer after the jump:

• Henning Fog at Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch thinks Lovely Bones shoves its obvious predecessor to the side:
  

  Having never read the book I can hardly speak with any authority on its translation to screen, but those images…I mean, they’re scrumptious. Just EDIBLE. This is the most visually exciting treatment of a horrific subject I have ever seen! Move over, What Dreams May Come — there’s a new afterlife fantasy in town.

• Gabe at Videogum also recognizes the film’s benefits over WDMC:
  

  It does look a little like What Dreams May Come, but I bet you that in Peter Jackson’s heaven, no dead children are pretending to be Asian airline stewardesses. And if nothing else, the math is definitely in Jackson’s favor:

  Mark Wahlberg > Robin Williams
  Susan Sarandon > Cuba Gooding Jr.
  Michael Imperioli +/- Annabella Sciorra
  Child Rape Homicide Car Crash

  Bingo.

• Mark Graham at Vulture disagrees with us about Tucci and goes one more for the looks-better-than-WDMC buzz:
  

  In particular, we felt a little cringe-y every time the (barely recognizable) Stanley Tucci shows up looking like he dressed up as Chester the Molester for Halloween. Fortunately, though, the scenes from the film that depict Susie in the afterlife look to be significantly less cheesy than the splotchy, paint-filled heaven that Robin Williams romped through in What Dreams May Come

• Owen Williams at Empire antes up the obligatory WDMC but raises with a more obscure reference:
  

  There are shades of What Dreams May Come and Paperhouse in the visualisation of Susie Salmon’s own personal Heaven, and the emphasis on standard amateur sleuthing might ring alarm bells for those who’ve read the novel and were expecting Jackson to come up with Heavenly Creatures Part 2.

• Alex Billington at FirstShowing is reminded of another movie’s fantasy world:
  

  This looks like a very interesting mix of beautiful heavenly imagery and an emotional drama about the loss of a loved one. I still think this looks phenomenal, but I guess that all just threw me off a bit at first. It reminded me of the trippy imagination scenes in Terry Gilliam’s Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

• Ben Child at The Guardian Film Blog also notes a Gilliam similarity, but is put off by the thing:
  

  Furthermore the spectacular depiction of Susie’s limbo existence takes the movie into a fantasy realm reminiscent of the work of Terry Gilliam, although the suggestion that a terrible death can lead to a place of wonder and joy is itself at the very least potentially facile, at worst, repugnant.

• S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline adds some seemingly incompatible comparisons to the mix:
  

  So it’s a thriller and a fantasy, we’re advised, with touches of swoony teen romance sprinkled in for the Twilight quadrant…And if all you’re after are the visual effects, then of course Jackson won’t let you down, just as long as you’re OK with heaven looking like the love child of Terrence Malick and Delgo. Which, let’s face it, is reason enough to crave the finished, Oscar-chasing product for yet another four months.

• Kofi Outlaw at ScreenRant thinks it looks even better than Jackson’s past work:
  

  Visually, this film looks like Jackson’s most accomplished work to date - even better in some ways than Lord of The Rings. Susie’s “personal heaven” looks fantastic to behold and I can’t wait to see Jackson’s full interpretation of the semi-afterlife, dubbed here as “the in-between.”

• Daniel Carlson at Pajiba also believes this is a visual improvement for Jackson but hates the trailer:
  

  The film’s visuals look strong, and certainly not as roughly queasy as Jackson’s work on The Lord of the Rings or The Frighteners (never forget!). That said, the trailer is cut like DreamWorks has no idea how to market it: It alternately plays like a family drama, a metaphysical fantasy, and a really B-level thriller.

• Neil Miller at Film School Rejects admits to crying while reading the book and believes the trailer does justice to the film:
  

  As far as I’m concerned, this is the drama to watch this winter — it has the potential to really go to the next level and possibly bring home some hardware during awards season. Great cast, amazing source material and a director who’s no slouch — not to mention a trailer that is fantastically cut to heighten the film’s tone — and we’ve got ourselves a film worth looking forward to.

• Mark at I Watch Stuff points out why the story had to take place 30 years ago:
  

  Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones takes us back to that time, the early ’70s, when [Chris] Hansen was still in school and Stanley Tucci was still able to rape and murder a girl without a camera crew busting in with some chat transcripts. The trailer has just been released, and it looks like the must-see dead-girl-watching-from-Heaven-as-Mark-Wahlberg-solves-her-murder film of the year.

• While the heaven and earth scenes may seem detached from one another, Lauren Davis at i09 positively notes that is not the case:
  

  Also apparent is the way the living and the dead continue to haunt one another. As in Sebold’s book, the trailer shows Susie’s impact on the living world as her ghost brushes by Ruth Connors and she calls out to her father from the afterlife. But here, we see that Susie’s world is altered by the actions of her friends and family. A drawing by her brother seems to come to life as a mountain sunrise. Her father breaking a ship in a bottle causes an exaggerated version of the same captive ship to shatter on the shores. And the memories of the place where she died continue to haunt her afterlife. It’s a visually intriguing set of choices to be sure, and hopefully they will also make Susie’s posthumous coming of age all the more convincing.

• Gina Telaroli at Take Part wishes the casting was a bit different:
  

  My only qualm is that I wish Ryan Gosling was the star (he’s so great).  Jackson reportedly fired him for being too overweight and replaced him with Mark Wahlberg, who I like, but who in this film is wearing a really bad wig.

• Tim Gomez at Cinema Blend also brings up the replacement of Gosling:
  

  As you can imagine, the afterlife imagery in the movie looks gorgeous (I’m hoping that the world looks a lot less blue screeny in the theatre, though) and the tone is fittingly epic for Jackson, but it’s hard not to imagine what Ryan Gosling could’ve done with the part of the father rather than Mark Wahlberg.

• According to Harry Knowles at Aint It Cool News, there’s a fellow film blogger visible in the trailer:
  

  And there at the start in the bookstore, I figured out who the child murderer was. He’s a large man in the background with a book, a scruffy beard and a distinguished nose! I know that’s the guy that kills children… at the very least. Yup, that’s Quint - who is probably going to be mortified to see himself hitting the trailer for LOVELY BONES - as everyone will think he’s the murderer

• Kristopher Tapley at In Contention acknowledges the Oscar worth, but that doesn’t mean he thinks it looks good:
  

  I am immediately taken by the overall look of the picture.  Andrew Lesnie’s photography is gorgeous to say the least, and the visual effects could very well find their way into Oscar contention.  Stanley Tucci looks certifiably creepy and could be someone to watch, but on the whole, still, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I got an overall “meh” feeling here.

• Vince Mancini at FilmDrunk recommends you skip both movie and book of Lovely Bones and read something else:
  

  I’d recommend reading Lucky, Sebold’s earlier book instead, a non-fiction account of her own rape when she was 18.  It’s kind of like The Lovely Bones, only without the Hollywooden plot and scene stolen from Ghost, and you can read it without fear of spontaneously growing a vagina.