Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

In Stephen Daldry's overwrought adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the director exploits one of America's greatest tragedies, 9/11, in an attempt to elicit emotion from the audience. Despite some appropriate heartstring-tugging, the film feels wholly contrived. Newcomer Thomas Horn gives a valiant effort as Oskar Schell, a socially awkward boy left to find closure for himself after losing his father (Tom Hanks) in the September 11th attacks, but the character comes off as obnoxious and precocious rather than endearing. Oskar asks too many questions, throws a fit when he doesn't get his way, and is kind of a know-it-all. If he was meant to be unlikeable, this would be fine, but Oskar is supposed to be the movie's hero. Aided by his defeated mother (an emotionally believable Sandra Bullock), his grandmother (Zoe Caldwell), and her mysterious mute tenant (a wonderfully emotive Max von Sydow), Oskar scours New York City's five boroughs trying to solve a riddle he thinks relates to his father, involving a key and someone named "Black." Where there were elements of humor in the novel, the movie's attempts at comic relief largely fall flat, with a woefully underutilized John Goodman contributing what he can in his limited screen time. In spite of some solid supporting performances, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close somehow feels much less than the sum of its parts.