Legendary New Zealand director Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings” & “King Kong”) follows his work on Middle Earth by turning his attention to, that other great mythical realm, heaven in this adaptation of the best-selling 2002 novel of the same name by Alice Sebold, which has received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.

14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is dispatched to a fairy-tale land by kindly neighbour George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), where she watches her parents Jack (Mark Wahlberg) and Abigail Salmon (Rachel Weisz), younger sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) and sometime love interest Ray Singh (Reece Ritchie) coming to terms with their loss in this curious period piece.

Critics Choice Award-winning starlet Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement” & “City of Ember”) puts in a powerful central performance with strong support from an intense Mark Wahlberg, a winsome Rachel Weisz, a comic Susan Sarandon and a truly twisted turn from Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated character actor Stanley Tucci.

The film-makers have doubtless achieved their admittedly somewhat limited aim of creating an “ethereal and emotional but not hokey” vision of the afterlife but the cute CGI masks a somewhat soulless story that leaves a talented cast with little to chew on and makes the whole child-murder milieu seem all a little too fun and facebookey.

“I wasn’t lost, or frozen, or gone… I was alive; I was alive in my own perfect world.”