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| EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (2012)
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SBD Star Rating:
by Chiara Adorno
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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has critics evenly divided. Its sentimentality is deplored by its detractors but defended by those who find the film moving. This is the story of a young boy who's father perishes in the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11. He is elfish and precocious. He may or may not have a form of autism. He intensely misses his father and upon finding a key hidden away in his father's closet, he sets out to find the person whose name appears on the envelope containing the key. This journey around all the boroughs surrounding New York City is what drives the film. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calls the film "solidly crafted, impeccably acted and self-important in ways that Oscar loves... is also incredibly close to exploitation.....the film is rife with fancy literary references - J.D. Salinger is one, used to indicate something important is being said." Andrew O'Hehir Salon pulls no punches and pronounces, the film "renders Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling 2005 novel into unconvincing Hollywood mush... it all adds up to something that looks and feels classy yet is really minor-league schmaltz... What we get is frankly a drag, a slow-moving tale of healing and redemption with a low-wattage resolution you'll glimpse miles away and a whole bunch of trailing loose ends." Betsy Sharkey of The Los Angeles Times however, found the film "handsomely polished, thoughtfully wrapped." Although, Sharkey recognizes the film will most probably be divisive given its sentimental nature. She contends, "Some will be bothered by the sentiment, others won't believe it goes far enough or deep enough." As as Ella Taylor NPR affirms,"for the most part, the film unfolds as a tough-minded but tender tale of suffering, confusion and redemption for children old enough to remember or know about the attacks on the towers. However she also notes that "every now and then, Daldry [the director] lapses into the pathetic or the portentous." |
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