|
|
"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" got an Oscar nomination for Best Picture today...and all that says is that if you make a contrived film surrounding 9/11, you too could get an Oscar nomination.
Stephen Daldry's cinematic interpretation of the Jonathan Safran Foer novel has very little going for it besides an excellent performance by Sandra Bullock and Viola Davis as the rest of the film is nothing more than a vehicle to try to manipulate tears from the viewing audience....tears that certainly never came close to bubbling up for me.
Thomas Horn plays Oskar, a boy who loses his father on that fateful September day only to find a key a year later...a key that he is sure will lead to a message from his father. And thus, the adventure begins...as he goes tracking down clues and randomly being let into people's homes...in New York City...and then managing to take their photograph with a camera that is practically an antique and developing the photos one by one, all while his mother stands aside clueless.
Yeah...right. That all seems plausible. And thus, yet another film with high expectation fails to deliver.
Horn is the focal point of the film and is supposed to be the emotional driving force yet all this kid does is overact terribly and make the character of Oskar seem almost maniacal. He is irritating on every level and spurred absolutely no emotion in me at all except annoyance. As the film continues on, with the sole intent of rousing emotion through memory, the film just gets more and more blatantly insulting as the scenes which are supposed to make you well up just peel back the many layers of emotional manipulation.
Even the strong performances of Davis and Bullock do not hold this film together. And then there is Max von Sydow who just garnered an Oscar nod in the Best Supporting Actor category. Why? I am really and truly not sure. While there was a sweetness to his limited performance, it is hardly anything to write home about. So, I'll credit this nomination to "we better do it now or it may be too late." Tom Hanks? I almost forgot he was even in the film.
If you like to sit back and be emotionally assaulted by a ridiculous story, this film is for you. For the rest, I suggest you keep it extremely muted and incredibly far away.
score 3/10
DJRMewzique 24 January 2012
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2554820/ |
|
1-12-2019 11:01:40
