Peter Jackson’s Latest Suffers from Too Much Special Effects and Too Little Character Development

Peter Jackson’s newest release The Lovely Bones bears greater similarity to his smaller films (particularly the wonderful Heavenly Creatures) than to the sprawling, epic Lord of the Rings trilogy—but it’s unlike any film he has directed previously. Alice Sebold’s 2002 novel is a startling, sometimes brutal, and often touching tale of a girl whose life ends before she even has her first kiss. Unfortunately the movie, though beautifully filmed, is an incoherent mashup of the book’s most...