Review of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) by Tyler R — 17 Sep 2012

How did this get nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars? I'm still baffled by it. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is about a young boy who loses his father in the September 11th attacks. He finds a key in his father's closet soon after and decides to search New York for the lock.

The movie stars Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow and some kid actor who annoyed me. The performances in the movie, with the exception of the kid, are all solid. Tom Hanks has limited screen time, but he's always an excellent actor, Sandra Bullock is great and Max von Sydow's Oscar nominated performance shines in this.

The kid actor though...holy crap. The kid in this movie is annoying. All he does in the movie is just scream in the camera. You would think he was Shia Labeouf's son. The movie tries to make you feel sorry for the kid, but there's one scene where he starts yelling at his grieving mother, then he goes to the kitchen, starts throwing stuff around and cussing out his own mother.

Some stuff just needs to be cleaned up and all I can say is that the kid needs to get punched in the face. I didn't buy the character's emotions and I also didn't buy the emotion of the movie.

The film has 9/11 in the mix for a few minutes and I guess the director wanted to make people feel sad about the tragedy, but he seemed to be milking the event. That's my biggest complaint about the movie; the emotion.

This movie tries way too hard to make the audience cry and feel sad, but it fails. Like I said, the kid was a little asshole and I don't think the parents got enough screen time for me to be able to connect with them.

There are moments in the movie that I did think were genuinely touching, but not exactly anything to shed a tear over. I also think the way the movie ended was a complete cop-out. The movie just builds up to something and I actually got eager to see what was going to happen, but then the only thing that happened was disappointment.

I've never read the book so I have no clue how this movie differs from the source material, but if the book ended the way the movie did, then I'm not sure if I could even bother with the book.

This movie did get a nomination for Best Picture at the Oscars, but it lost thankfully. This is the worst Best Picture-nominated movie I've ever seen. The emotion is too forced, the end was cheap, some parts play out as cliche and despite some strong acting and a few nice scenes that felt in sync with the events of the film, the movie just falls flat.