Look, I know 9/11 was no picnic. I was there. It sucked. And in such a way that it makes the fact that I used the word “sucked” just now seem completely disrespectful. But surely the makers of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close could have devised something a little more interesting, more spirited, more fun than this wretched, moping movie. Directed by Stephen Daldry—perhaps the unfunniest director of all time—it’s based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, who playfully toyed with the format of the printed novel to neatly sidestep the maudlin elements of his story, in which a boy with Asperger’s copes with the death of his father in the World Trade Center attacks.
But this movie has no glint, no spark, no sense of macabre humor. Instead, it’s an unending assault on your tear ducts and your intelligence. Thomas Horn, an androgynous and creepily articulate 14-year-old who won Jeopardy! during Kids Week, plays 9-year-old Oskar with unsettling poise and diction. He’s not acting, he’s reciting, giving Extremely Loud the feeling of watching a school play none of your kids are in.
The movie follows Oskar around as he bothers total strangers about a mysterious key his father left behind. Tom Hanks pops up as the dead dad in what’s barely a cameo, and Sandra Bullock weepily plays the widow/mom in profoundly irritating fashion. (There is one patch of light in all this mushy crap: Max von Sydow is fantastic as the elderly, mute tenant of Oskar’s grandmother, inviting light and humor into this dreary mess without uttering a word. It seems immediately obvious who his character really is, but to say anything more feels spoiler-y.) The rhythms and shorthands of the storytelling feel entirely wrong. Every moment is given profound, ponderous significance, and by the end you’ll be completely suffocated. 
This is one of my favorite books and when I saw Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock were going to star in it, my hopes fell.
This is an amazing story, and not entirely formulated for your or anyone’s rote amusement. Rather, the intent of the book and movie each is to tell a story about the human condition and loss. Your review feels more like your personal reaction and emotional dialect than a movie review. Were you expecting something more digestible? My faith in Stranger movie reviews has declined.
@2 This is one of the better Stranger film reviews I have read in awhile…out side of Paul Constant’s (even though I think he and I watch different movies). This review comments on acting, direction, editing, writing, and even the differences between the book and the movie all within three paragraphs. This review also actually comments on the movie (unlike some OTHER writers…*ahem*Mudede*ahem*) and not on some old Marxist text that is unrelated to a review but more a propos of a non-sensical book of how the world functions…nor is it just a series of snarky comments that barely is even about the movie (like Lindy on her bad days).
I thought the book was an exercise in intellectual masturbation by an author who apparently decided he’d follow up his brilliant and inventive debut with a mountain of lazy, trite nonsense. How many ways can we make this story an overwrought cluster f-ck of despair from whence hope shall, of course, spring eternal? Well there should be an orphaned boy right from the start, and he should have Aspergers, and his Brilliant and Perfect Father should die on 9/11, and the grandparents should be Holocaust survivors, and if you haven’t cried yourself to death yet maybe you’ll go see the movie too. Luckily I can pass, thanks to this review.
Listen I’m sure it sucked but complaining that a movie about an autistic kid whose dad died on 9/11 wasn’t funny enough is pretty ridiculous.