The Lovely Bones

narrows101 wrote:Saw this movie last night. First of all, call me old or whatever, but we hardly ever go to movies at night, we usually go to matinees - cheaper and less people (what's next, Early Bird Specials? Oh wait......). OMG the line at the box office took me off guard and the theater was PACKED. I had only found out yesterday afternoon that they were marketing the movie to teenage girls, and the theater was packed with teens. They all clapped and laughed at all the WRONG parts - who laughs when you are describing how someone is murdered and when a murderer is chasing someone?

Anyway, the movie... if we are to believe that Hugh was up for the role of the father and Marky Mark got the role, IMO it wasn't anything that spectacular. Not sure if it was the role or if it was Wahlberg. He had a few intense scenes - crying, smashing things, getting beat up - but that was about it. The girl, killer, and the girl's sister were the best parts of the movie, although Susan Sarandon has some hysterical scenes. I do wonder though if the father would have been more charismatic if Hugh had done the role. Wahlberg was kinda just "there" I thought.

At No. 3, Peter Jackson's version of the bestselling book The Lovely Bones finally went modestly wide after 5 weeks in very limited release. It made $5.7M Friday and $6.4M Saturday for a 3-day weekend of $17M and $17.5M cume from 2,563 runs for what's expected to be a respectable $20M for the 4-day holiday. It’s no secret that the budget was big, and the reviews were mixed, as was the pic's performance on just 3 screens in NY and LA. But Paramount held a test screening in Kansas City on November 19th for teen girls, and lo and behold the film tested 90% in the top two boxes and scored a 67% definite recommend. So the studio came up with an alternative approach to selling the Dad and his dead daughter storyline and re-invented the film in TV spots as a must-see for teen girls. I'm told fully a third of the audience was under 18 last night. And, while the overall CinemaScore was a B, 70% of that teen audience scored the movie an A. (It turned out to be a controversial but ultimately wise decision to omit the book's brutal rape.) "Rob Moore, Megan Colligan, and Josh Greenstein did a tremendous job redefining the campaign and never waivered in their enthusiasm for the film given the softness of the platform," a Peter Jackson pal gushed to me. Especially since Paramount inherited the pic from DreamWorks and never would have greenlit it. Let's agree it's the real story of this b.o. weekend.

icelemt38 wrote:I saw it and was highly disappointed by it. I read the script and the movie I imagined was very different from the one I ended up seeing. The script was driven by the Dad and his search, the movie made me feel like the Dad was irrelevent, but like Pat said, it could be from Wahlberg's atrocious acting. I could do without all the scenes shot in digital, and the tonal shifts, it could have done without Surandon's comic relief which took away from the main focus. I also think this could have been a time when Jackson's vision kind of got in the way like how Luhrman's did for Australia.

I was one of the ones super pissed when we found out Hugh passed and I loved the script, but the final product was so different, so I'm actually pretty glad Hugh passed on this one.

icelemt38 wrote:But good job Hugh, good call on this one!