A nine-year-old amateur inventor, Francophile, and pacifist searches New York City for the lock that matches a mysterious key left behind by his father, who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Prestige source, tragic yet uplifting subject and award-winning cast and director – this feels like prime Oscar-bait. Moving, if heavy-handed, it’s an emotional walkabout with real heart.
This is a classy production with radiant cinematography from Local Hero veteran Chris Menges and a striking performance from newcomer Horn but it is also a contrived tearjerker that is neither as poignant nor as profound as it might like to be.
It’s just a well-intentioned, mediocre film: extremely self-important and incredibly tiresome.
It’s just too tempting to dismiss it as extremely long and incredibly disappointing. It’s challenging, divisive and has moments of beauty but leaves you cold.
Designed to provoke maximum tear welling, the effect is more like the photo of the crying elephant that Oskar at one point explains must have been manipulated using Photoshop: false and cheap.
This is an expensively made, well-meaning drama that tries to deal with a subject much greater than itself by tugging unnecessarily hard, and often, on the emotions. By opting to be blatant, it says nothing but the trite and obvious.
A meaty whiff of phoney-baloney rises from this extremely contrived and incredibly preposterous movie, a mawkish, precious and bizarre fantasy of emotional pain.
Fascinating despite itself. Which every way you fall, this will provoke a strong reaction.
It is a heartfelt, heartwarmer of a film that lacks the pain and profundity that the subject matter really deserves.
Those who actually lost loved ones on the day would be justified in feeling that the film-makers have piggybacked their grief – the film has nothing of use to say otherwise.
While Horn is one to watch, the same can’t be said of the film as it lays on the sentiment way too thick.
An intelligent and accomplished film.
From early on, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close reveals itself as a hollow, calculated, manipulative film.
This is a horrible folly of a film – not offensive particularly, just extravagantly inadequate to its subject.
Daldry's Extremely Loud gives child's view of 9/11
General release. Check local listings for show times.
RSS feed of Cinema reviews