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Capone's full review of the Worst Film of 2011: EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE!!!
Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
This film tied (along with LARRY CROWNE) for my Worst Film of 2011, so you already know we're not starting from a good place. Explaining exactly why this film is worthy of such pure and unadulterated loathing is not the easiest job I've had, but lord knows I'm game. Right out of the gate, let's start with the character of Oskar Schell (played by newcomer Thomas Horn, who was discovered after appearing on "Jeopardy"), the 11-year-old son of Thomas (Tom Hanks), a New York eccentric who likes to send his child on mini-adventures and treasure hunts of his own making. Quite frankly, I hate stories about people/families like this because I don't believe they actually exist on the planet earth. Regardless, EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE flashes back between a time when the family was together and a time after "The Worst Day" (as Oskar calls it), meaning September 11, 2001. You see, it just so happens Thomas worked in the World Trade Center and died on that day.
All of these adventures are meant to force the sensitive pacifist Oskar confront his fears head on, but with dad gone and mom Linda (Sandra Bullock) a complete wreck, Oskar must force himself to find a mystery to solve, which he does when he finds a key hidden in a vase in his father's closet. The key is in an envelope with a name on it, and Oskar looks up every person in New York City with the same last name to see if he can discover what the key unlocks. Oskar is using the mystery to avoid confronting his loss (duh), and avoid playing his mother several terrified messages his father left on their answering machine just before he died.
Oskar has encounters with such dignitaries as Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, and Max von Sydow (there's no way this guy is getting an Oscar recognition, so stop saying he will) during the course of his hunt, all with quirky, sometimes annoying results. But mostly his meetings with various people with the same last name are a series of weirdly pleasant exchanges to lead nowhere. I don't get any kind of cheap thrill picking on kids, but Thomas Horn is a terrible actor; I don't want to call him annoying because that might be the way Oskar is written, but dammit, I wanted to throttle the twerp pretty much for the whole movie.
The thing I kept thinking while watching EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is that I could see it working better as a novel, which it is. But something went horribly wrong in the transition from Jonathan Safran Foer's book to Eric Roth's adaptation to Stephen (THE READER, THE HOURS) Daldry's directed work, and the result is a disaster of the highest order. This film is so spectacularly bad that the bar for pretentious, deep-thoughts movies has been lowered roughly the length of my middle finger.
And then comes this scene at the end with Davis, Wright, and the kid that actually is kind of interesting and moody, but it's so painfully out of place in this movie that I wanted to murder the rest of the film for ruining this sequence. By the time all of the mysteries are revealed, I was ready to hop in my car and park it halfway through a tree at 75 mph. There is nothing "special" or "noble" or "touching" about EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE; and it's weird to have a film that features a death at the World Trade Center be about nothing more than an over-indulged child continuing to be allowed to run around the city, meeting strangers, and being away from his mom for hours on end. There is no search for meaning, for reason, for life's big and little secrets. This movie exists very much on the surface despite its clear belief that it is a cerebral experience meant for only the most feeling intellectuals. Oh, god, when you are wrong, you are so wrong, Stephen Daldry. And I'm done.
-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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is what they should have called it. 911 is so 2005.
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I was actually upset that they released this film (in limited release) on Christmas Day, our supposed "time of joy." Watching this preview was like watching every negative emotion come to play while a director pulls strings to make us "feel" something.
Who wants to see a movie on Christmas Day where, according to the preview, someone will be crying nearly every five minutes of the running time (or so it would feel). You nailed it on the head when you labeled this film as "pretentious."
I wish Tom Hanks would stray a littler further away from this kind of melodramatic material, and more into the visceral, "Saving Private Ryan" material. -
I've slowly come to despise Tom Hanks; he's supposedly an "everyman" who has no apparent understanding of actual living human beings.
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But this movie made me retroactively find it cloying and obnoxious. Seeing the on-screen portrayal of autism/asperger's/whatever (but not full-retard) as obvious emotional bait shatters any illusions that Oskar is a likable character. At least in the book, the mom is more of a straight-up cunt.
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I guess I'm pleased to hear this sucks because I would have been tempted to see it, but like Emurites mentioned, I didn't want to be in a theater where everyone was crying every five minutes.
"Pretentious." Hit it on the head.
Thanks for the review, Capone. -
Jan 20, 2012 6:27:32 AM CST
I still don't understand why you don't like this movie. However, you review makes me not like you...
by coughlins laws
I love your comment about you not believing families like that really exist. That's a really arrogant, cynical statement. I feel bad that you are so jaded by life. Anyway, usually your reviews are very useful to me, whether I agree with your opinions or not, but this review is not very useful at all. I simply don't believe you that this is the worst movie of 2011. Take it easy on the hyperbole if you want your review to be taken seriously...
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Took 23 years for Mel Brooks to get away with The Producers. I guess we'll have to wait until 2024.
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I didn't like how you referred to Max von Sydow as 'this guy.'
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Jan 20, 2012 7:44:08 AM CST
I can no longer hear Hanks's voice without picturing him as a cowboy doll
by spandau belly
I just can't.
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Jan 20, 2012 8:18:02 AM CST
Any chance one of the terrified messages left on the machine is
by durhay
Hanks screaming "WILSON!!!" ?
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Jan 20, 2012 8:18:41 AM CST
Did Capone just turn 60? Seems to be quite bitter about everything nowadays.
by banned_of_brothers
Every article of his seems to have at least a hundred "get of mah lawn" moments.
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Jan 20, 2012 9:14:59 AM CST
I knew it was shit when I saw the oxymoron "fight" in the trailer
by matthooper8
That scene showed me that people dumber than me were trying way too hard to be smarter.
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...had a terrible ending, too, that was really out of place. Basically some stranger says the things that the boy wanted his dad to say to him before he died. It was just sloppy writing.
Oh, and there's a holocaust side story in the book, and it didn't quite mesh well. Did that make it into the movie?
This adaptation looks bad (I haven't seen it), but Sandra Bullock will get an Oscar nod for Supporting Actress because the Academy can be lazy sometimes and go for the easy nomination. -
Jan 20, 2012 10:01:43 AM CST
Does he discover that his dad was the twentieth hijacker?
by turingtestee
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This film is so spectacularly bad that the bar for pretentious, deep-thoughts movies has been lowered roughly the length of my middle finger.
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Nice job, Capone.
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Today's subject: iron ass'd MMA fighter and brand new movie star Gina Carano.
Does she or doesn't she? -
Jan 20, 2012 10:32:19 AM CST
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: The Michael Bay Story
by nasty in the pasty
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Yes. But don't piss her off or she'll squeeze that well toned turd cutter and take off your manhood.
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As soon as I put the book down, I immediately started drafting a treatment because this book nailed me. It was visually and emotionally razor sharp and I knew exactly what to do with it. About a month later I find out they're CASTING the movie.
Oh. Well, fuck it, whatever.
And...they ruined it? Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck these guys. -
Jan 20, 2012 12:31:37 PM CST
9/11 films: the "holocaust movies" of the 21st century
by daddylonghead
not to compare those two totally different incidents historically or as tragedies, but just in the sense that both generate apparently endless earnest, mawkish embarrassingly bad movies (and novels)...
...and some people can't seem to get enuff of those movies/novels and I don't give a shit about those movies/novels. -
Jan 20, 2012 12:36:07 PM CST
Quirky tragedy porn, based on a cloying novel from a precocious young twat of an author.
by choppah
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On bad movies:
“Vent your spleen. In criticism, it’s better to be angry than depressed.”
(Ten lessons for film critics from J. Hoberman)
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..regardless....you just got.........
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...............coxxed!!!!!!! -
And congrats Capone for provoking Coughlin's Laws out from his bunker. And you didn't even have to bring up Jay Leno.
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Jan 20, 2012 2:27:21 PM CST
Yup, people who send their kids on adventures doesn't exist!
by hollywoodhellraiser
That hollywood BS at it finest! The adventures when went on as kids were our parents kicking us outta the house during summer and probably hoping we get lost!
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Jan 20, 2012 4:15:11 PM CST
The let their autistic, 11 YEAR OLD son just traipse around NYC unsupervised?
by vince_ricardo
Is that what this film is about? Wtf?
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Jan 20, 2012 4:16:43 PM CST
Argh. The "y" that was supposed to be in "They let" was also traipsing around, unsupervised
by vince_ricardo
Damned letter!
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I agree completely with your review. Lets just not refer to the great Max Von Sydow as "that guy". Come on.
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Jan 20, 2012 9:57:40 PM CST
I can remember when I looked forward to every Tom Hanks movie
by proevad
Yup. I'm that fucking old.
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www.infowars.com
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No it wasn't. Anyone who thinks that it was simply doesn't have the faculties to accept/deal with the fact that the United States' security was completely inept and it resulted in an attack by truly evil people. If we hadn't been asleep at the switch, it might have been prevented. Nothing more than that. It doesn't have to be anything more than that. Thousands of people died. Idiotic conspiracy theories do nothing.
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All conspiracy theorists are fucking cunts.
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It'll be about rural republicans who HATED everything about New York prior to 9/11 suddenly gettin' all maudlin about it and becoming sociopathic fascists with slim to no grip on reality. I might also call the moviefilm AMERICA 2001 ON UP: AN ENTROPY STORY.
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...just got an Oscar nomination. And it seems I'm not the only one getting tired of the hyperbole in negative reviews. Is it bullying or criticism your doing?
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