Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s book is a horrible piece of cinema which turns what could have been a sensitive portrayal of a family trying to get over a tragedy into a flippant, gushy piece of over-sentimental trash.

14 year old Susie Salmon is abducted by a paedophile on her way home from school. He takes her to a specially constructed dungeon beneath the corn fields near her home where she is abused and murdered. Susie awakens in the afterlife – a veritable Elysian Fields, full of trees whose leaves fly off like birds and gigantic ships in bottles which smash upon the shoreline.

Meanwhile, her family try to get on with their lives: her sister discovers boys; her father tries to investigate the murder himself; her mother leaves and her alcohol-sodden grandmother moves in.

This is a terrible film, one that carries the awful message that bad things that happen are God’s will and that victims of atrocities are happy because they get to inhabit a magical gumdrop fairyland where they meet other victims of the same tragedy.

And it is a tragedy. The rape and murder of a 14 year old girl should not be treated so flippantly. The Lovely Bones thinks that it can gloss over this fact by painting a colourful world that’s a better place; a place which contains far too many special effects when it should have been concentrating on character development. It exhibits some of the worst clichéd film making you’ll ever see. Every time Susie’s sister walks past the paedophile’s house, she emits a shudder, like someone walking over her grave. Her dog can sense the evil in the place too as it barks furiously every time they go near. Come on. The evil-detecting dog shtick is the stuff of TV movies, not something you’d expect to see in a heavyweight production. It’s lazy and pathetic.

When her sister breaks into the house, she treads on a squeaky floorboard in the killer’s bedroom, revealing his hideaway that contains a journal which neatly explains the step by step directions he took to murder Susie. It’s even got a lock of her hair in it.

The ostensible meaning behind the title is that it’s about “the lovely bones that have grown up around this tragedy” – about those people that have moved on with their lives, crucially without her, but this is completely lost because we’re not emotionally invested in any of the other characters – the only people the film focuses on are Susie and her dad; the rest are explained away in another trite montage.

It’s bewildering why Stanley Tucci has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (something which will almost certainly go to Christoph Waltz for his performance in Inglourious Basterds). Tucci is a fine actor, but not in this film. Here he plays a paedophile as stereotypical as you like – mid 40s, comb-over, moustache and big thick glasses. He might as well have a sign on him that says “Hello my name is Chester”. And in the end he’s killed by a falling icicle - he’s not caught or brought to justice (the clichéd cosmic kind is that only kind we’re going to get) – which makes the viewer feel cheated (that’s if you haven’t stopped caring a long time ago).

It’s a schmaltzy, hackneyed, ham-fisted mess which couldn’t have been directed with less subtlety. It’s so bad, that you start to wonder if Peter Jackson actually knows what he’s doing – was Lord Of The Rings just a big fluke?

The Lovely Bones should remain buried, preferably in a deep hole.

The Lovely Bones (PG) is released February 19.

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon Director: Peter Jackson Writer: Alice Sebold (novel), Fran Walsh (screenplay), Philippa Boyens (screenplay), Peter Jackson (screenplay) Certificate: PG Running time: 135 minutes