sooner or later, everyone makes a mistake

Though the director, Peter Jackson cannot bear all the blame for the film version of The Lovely Bones being lip-curlingly dire (except for the single three-quarters of a sequence where the book is followed closely). Walsh and Boyens might have noticed at some point that the screenplay they were writing lacked every single shred of emotional oomph present in the book they must all have presumably read. Alice Sebold, presumably involved or at least interested in the outcome to some extent (and who might have had the ear of the people involved) ought to have pointed out that the narration was in completely the wrong tone and that a large amount of major plot points were being missed out. Marky Mark should really have spotted that he was a somewhat inexact match for Susie's father. Whoever was responsible for the sound mix might have realised that adding reverb does not make everything ethereally wondrous. Most of all, Brian Eno needs to be told (possibly by tattooing it in reverse on his forehead so that he is constantly reminded) that he is not Thomas Newman and that there are ways of writing music other than skipping around without ever quite exactly copying Any Other Name from American Beauty.

The only potential excuse I can think of is that Jackson might have been unable to concentrate on this for being too busy worrying about the huge potential for fuckup present on The Hobbit if Guillermo del Toro is directing it...