"...Forget The Chase...Let's Cut To The Bone..."

Got a small bone to pick today.

Apologies for the pun I saw coming but couldn't avoid.

(Entertainment Weekly) -- A dead 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), murdered on her way home from school in 1973, tells her story from heaven in "The Lovely Bones."

In doing so, Susie follows the narrative path set for her in the striking 2002 novel by Alice Sebold on which this much-awaited adaptation by Peter Jackson is based. But as directed by the lord of "The Lord of the Rings" from a screenplay by Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, his bleached "Bones" bears little resemblance to the book in either tone or complexity.

Readers will be frustrated; newcomers to the story may wonder why what is now essentially a serial-killer thriller includes so many scenes of a heaven that looks like a gumdrop-colored hobbit shire, a magical place of fanciful special effects.

In Jackson's simplified, sweetened, and CGI-besotted telling, "The Lovely Bones" is a sad-but-hopeful, dramatic-but-gentle fairy tale intentionally made less upsetting for teens. (There's no indication that Susie gets raped, as she does in the novel, and her murder occurs off screen.) "Atonement's" terrific Ronan, with her astonishing glacier-blue eyes, watches from a scenic afterlife as her father (Mark Wahlberg), mother (Rachel Weisz), younger siblings, and selected friends simultaneously heal from their loss and search for her killer.

For comic relief, the family's boozy granny (Susan Sarandon) arrives, swathed in mink. Apparently participating in a burlesque movie, Sarandon camps it up, demonstrating terrible housekeeping skills and wreaking grande-dame havoc.

As for the killer, he's in plain sight from the beginning a creepy neighbor (Stanley Tucci) with the hopeless comb-over and furtive mustache of an easy-to-spot perv. Tucci is jolting in the role, honestly unsettling as he maintains an exterior of mildness that masks a grotesque interior.

Electrifying danger accompanies his every scene. But this in itself becomes a problem, as that same energy leaves the screen when he does. Jackson reduces his "Lovely Bones", in the end, to the dramatic contrast between the menace of a hateful killer (will he be caught?) and the grief of a loving father (can he avenge his daughter's death?).

Sebold's "Lovely Bones", on the other hand, is fleshed out with the perilous, irresistible power of sex the author acknowledges a real world of extramarital sex and sex between young lovers in addition to the heinous rape from which moviegoers are shielded.

The filmmaker handled the sexual power of girls beautifully in 1994's "Heavenly Creatures". But here he shies from the challenge, shortchanging a story that isn't only about the lightness of souls in heaven but also about the urges of bodies on earth. Jackson forfeits depth for safe, surface loveliness.

EW Grade: C+

One need not, I think, be a Rhodes scholar to read between the lines and zero in on what happened here.

Which is sort of my point.

The "conflict" between the "artistic" and the "commercial" is not a new kid on the block.

I'm willing to bet that Michaelangelo was pressured to include what passed for corporate logos in those days to his work on the Sistine ceiling.

Cheeseburgers. Chariot repair.

Potato patahto.

And I'm also willing to bet that any "serious" writer (and I put the word serious in quotes only to label said writers as those who write without considering the potential adaptability of their work for screen, big or small) would tell you that the turning of their work into a motion picture is, at best, a slippery slope and, at worst, the literary equivalent of standing by while their baby is murdered before their eyes.

I learned to read very early in life and have loved doing so since the beginning.

I also began watching movies very early in life and have loved doing so since the beginning.

While I am a fan of each, though, I am not a fan of both.

And would be perfectly happy if the "serious" works were never made into movies.

For, at least, two reasons.

First, I like painting my own images when I read fiction.

Images, as in imaginiation.

There is something uniquely magical about our individual ability to read a passage and conjure up our own vision of what the scene might look like or how the protagonist might appear.

And, even with the best of intentions, the transferrance of those passages to film inevitably prevents us from being able to do so, regardless of the quality of the original novel.

I really didn't get all that buzzed when I read The DaVinci Code, for example, but at least I had fun imagining the faces and places and comings and goings.

Now all I visualize when I hear the title is Tom Hanks with a really bad haircut.

The fair point question, at this point, is "well, what are they supposed to make movies of, Mr. Artsy Fartsy?".

Easy peezee.

It's called "original screenplay".

It even has its own Oscar category.

Yeah, right, you say. You want more substance out of your movie going experience than "Dude, Where's My Car?".

Me, too.

Here's a few original screenplays that have made it to the screen.

Citizen Kane. On The Waterfront. Sunset Boulevard. The Sting. Chinatown. Annie Hall. Moonstruck. Ghost. The Usual Suspects. American Beauty. Fargo.

And more recently...

Crash.

Juno.

Milk.

A lot of very cool movies.

And one very cool added benefit.

The Juno and Bleeker that charmed us don't conflict a bit with the Juno and Bleeker we conjured up in our imaginations while we were reading the novel.

Because there wasn't one.

Am I serious about all of this?

Yeah.

Do I think there's an ice cube's chance it'll happen?

Hell, no.

But, in a perfect world, it would eliminate the too often result of turning novels into movies.

The "adaptation", even dumbing down, that alters the impact in the cause of widening the demographic and selling more tickets.

In other words...

"The Lovely Bones" , a heart wrenching novel about a little girl's violent rape and murder and the resulting emotional consequences shows up on the screen as CGI soaked episode of "Law and Order-Special Victims Unit."

At the very least, Susie Salmon deserves much better.