Film adaptations of novels are always difficult to pull off. Readers have their own perceptions of how each character is supposed to look, how each voice is supposed to sound and how each situation is supposed to be interpreted. When given specific source material such as a novel, there is an ever-present challenge of satisfying loyal readers without creating a three-hour movie that overindulges itself in minor plot points. Most importantly, though, movies and books are inherently different. Books rely on description while movies rely on moving images to convey setting, tone and emotion. To balance the two is a task so difficult even acclaimed filmmakers can have significant trouble, and such is the case with The Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson.On paper, The Lovely Bones should work. It is an acclaimed but controversial story about a 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon, played brilliantly by the young Saoirse Ronan, who is brutally raped and murdered by George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), a quiet neighborhood man who keeps to himself. The plotline is not so much about Susie's death but the aftermath. It is a haunting two-sided story depicting both Susie looking down from purgatory trying to accept what has happened to her and dealing with her own death, as well as the on-Earth perspective of the death of a young daughter tearing a family apart. The plotline is extremely emotional as it tells the story of a deeply scarred family dealing with issues of justice, revenge, healing and the search for answers when none appear to be in sight.

The film has many A-list actors and actresses, from Susie's father and mother, Jack and Abigail Salmon (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz, playing grieving parents marvelously), to the smoking alcoholic Grandma Lynn (Susan Sarandon) and even Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos fame as detective Len Fenerman, trying to help a grieving family that has no answers. If that isn't enough, the multiple-Academy-Award-winning director Peter Jackson is both the producer and director. With all this going for it, one would ask what could possibly go wrong, and unfortunately, the answer is quite a bit.

I do have to admit that I have never read the 2002 New York Times bestseller written by Alice Sebold, and, after reading an in-depth plot description, I understand that all the little side stories could never have been successfully linked together into one reasonable-length movie. The issue is that instead of leaving small points aside, the film mentions them briefly only to leave the viewer with an empty, unresolved feeling. The only thing I am glad Jackson downplayed was the death of Susie. In the novel the scene is a graphic scene of rape and sickening murder, while the film manages to clearly convey the experience without needing to show these disturbing images.

The most pressing issue I had with the film was that it seemed that Peter Jackson never really defined what kind of perspective he wanted to take on the novel. He constantly switches from an elaborate bright colorful CGI heaven that looks like a cartoon environment (though undeniably beautiful) and dark 1970s-era Pennsylvania where a family is struggling to cope with a loss while unknowingly living right by a horrible killer. The dynamic makes for a very choppy film that is very difficult to get into, all the more disappointing as the story is so captivating. The scenes on Earth are the ones that are the most entrancing, especially those that involve George Harvey, the maniacal killer, while the fantasy world is where Jackson seems to have hit a wall. He creates scenes so elaborate that they become unnecessary. During one scene in particular, Mark Wahlberg is destroying model ships in bottles out of grief and anguish while concurrently a helpless Susie is standing on a cliff watching floating gigantic ships in bottles smashing into rocks and sinking them. The constant switching back and forth takes away from the pain the viewer is supposed to feel and instead just distracts the viewer with pretty images. Peter Jackson has proven himself a master of creating fantasy worlds with The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, but even Middle Earth wasn't made on a green screen. The Lovely Bones, though fiction, shouldn't look like a fantasy.

There are moments where the film does work, and those are usually the scenes with just Ronan, Tucci or the two of them together. Both play their roles brilliantly even though their characters are essentially polar opposites. One is an innocent young girl who comes of age before having to really grow up, who accepts life once she is already gone from it, and the other is a horrible murderer whose silent demeanor and obsessive nature has kept him right beside his victim's grieving family avoiding suspicion. While Ronan's Susie Salmon is innocent and truly a victim in the story, Tucci's George Harvey is cold, dark and as magnetic as a car accident. In a film with many underdeveloped minor characters and flat story arcs, this young actress and this more experienced actor gave some salvation to a film that badly needed it. I only wish Ronan had more screen time that wasn't in front of a green screen, as the first third of the film that built toward her murder flowed much better than the rest.

Given the source material and how expansive the story is, The Lovely Bones is by no means a bad film, but it is also far from a great one. Plagued by a lack of focus, the film never fully captivates the viewer and instead feels like a weak game of tug of war, pulling the viewer in for a couple minutes before losing momentary focus and letting up slack. Within the film there were some great performances and some eerily unforgettable scenes, but it tries too hard to cram in too much instead of stepping back and letting the story breathe. The visuals are incredible and the attention to detail, which makes each scene look straight out of the 1970s, is impeccable, but a pretty picture without focus leaves viewers feeling empty.