I usually like Roger Ebert’s movie reviews. Usually. But one part of his review of “Lovely Bones” struck me as odd.

He complains that there’s a heaven in the movie. Really. I’m not kidding.

I don’t have much interest in the movie as I was unimpressed by the book and am not a huge Mark Wahlberg fan. But the entire movie “The Lovely Bones” is narrated by a dead girl so there kind of had to be a heaven or at least an afterlife in the film. Sorry if the idea of an afterlife offends Mr. Ebert.

And if that wasn’t weird enough, Ebert took an especially odd turn when he said he didn’t like the idea that Heaven was a happy place.

Here’s what Ebert wrote:

The makers of this film seem to have given slight thought to the psychology of teenage girls, less to the possibility that there is no heaven, and none at all to the likelihood that if there is one, it will not resemble a happy gathering of new Facebook friends. In its version of the events, the serial killer can almost be seen as a hero for liberating these girls from the tiresome ordeal of growing up and dispatching them directly to the Elysian Fields.

Uh. So a movie that’s narrated by a dead person has to give equal time to the possibility there’s no afterlife or heaven? What’s that about?

And then the twisted thought that if heaven is seen as a happy place in the movie that makes the killer a hero for sending them to a happy place?

That’s what Christians mean when we say “They’re in a better place.” Does Ebert want the afterlife to stink? We don’t want the people we love to die but we are comforted that they are in the presence of God. And we don’t see killers as heroes for putting them there.

Mr. Ebert seems to be working through some of his own issues in his column I guess. I wish him well and hope he finds peace.