Review of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

2/4

I only watched Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, because it was nominated for Best Picture this year. I was very surprised, because the movie only has 46% positive reviews at the moment. Apparently, this is the worst reviewed movie to have been nominated for the prestigious award. Interestingly enough, the second lowest rated movie was The Reader at 62%, also directed by Stephen Daldry. The Academy must love this guy or something. I looked at Eric Roth's resume, and I like what I see. He recently wrote The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, one of my favorite movies. Maybe then, the source material was the reason why this movie was pretty unbearable for me. It's usually pretty hard to adapt books. I never read the book, but I definitely dislike that title. For a good amount of the movie, I was looking away or covering my face, because it was just too nauseating to watch. I guess it was the kid, Thomas Horn, who kept making me cringe. There's a lot of screaming in this movie from him, and it's very irritating. I always admit bias, so I'm going to say I have never experienced a close death. I guess I don't know how a person really reacts in that situation. However, other critics have also pointed how the situations the kid is put in seem forced, which I totally agree with. The kid is a very unlikable character. I guess that's the main reason why I find it hard to enjoy the movie. It's hard to feel sorry for him when he's acting all crazy. I really hated it when he cursed at the doorman of his building, who doesn't do anything wrong. The worst is when this child tells his mother that she should have been the one to die. The premise is so strange and silly that I don't really want to follow this character in his journey. He randomly finds a key and decides to walk around all 5 boroughs NYC to find somebody who can be connected to it. Are you kidding me? He's living in a delusion. Another thing, how does he get around without public transportation? NYC is not a small town. I was kind of surprised that Max von Sydow was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. He didn't speak, and I felt like he wasn't in the movie much. He played the most interesting character, but his story wasn't really concluded. The character left before we could find out more about him. The whole story just seemed ridiculous to me. Roger Ebert said it seemed like a fairy tale, and I think that is a perfect description. Another big problem for me is that I feel like the movie exploits the 9/11 tragedy. Does the father dying in the towers really move the story any better? He could have died any other way. A more inexplicable way to die would be some terminal illness like a cancer. You see, a theme of the movie is that some things such as 9/11 can't be explained. I really felt the exploitation when the movie showed images of a man falling or jumping out of the towers. The thing that really drives this exploitation thing home for me is that the kid introduces himself as a son of a 9/11 victim to everybody. Of course, it's going to be sad when a kid constantly brings up that his father died in that awful tragedy. I wanted to give the movie a lower rating, but I can't really say it's a bad movie. To give it less than 2 out of 4 stars would be doing just that. My favorite part of the movie is towards the end with Sandra Bullock. It's too bad she wasn't in the movie more. Tom Hanks was hardly in the movie, too, but I liked him a lot in that role. I liked all the supporting cast, including John Goodman and Viola Davis, a contender for Best Leading Actress this year. I guess I'm saying that I like everybody in the movie, except for the main character, the annoying kid. Maybe, it wasn't a good idea to give a job like this to a kid without any acting experience. The whole movie, including the dialogue and everything about 9/11, seem to have all been done for Oscar bait. It'a hard not to feel for somebody who has been affected by the worst tragedy in history, but even the kid's name is Oskar! Come on, now!