Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: December 25, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
46
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
13
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Boxoffice MagazinePete HammondDec 20, 2011
It's an emotional powerhouse of a film, an unforgettable and rewarding motion picture experience. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 22, 2011
Director Stephen Daldry has fashioned an emotionally powerful cinematic testimony about that horrific late summer day. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 18, 2011
Best of all, von Sydow is absolutely wonderful, with the great veteran actor clearly relishing this very unusual role as he darts, skulks and, in a stealthy way, mugs across town. Without saying a thing, he dominates the middle part of the movie. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisJan 19, 2012
So all the handsome shots that turn the city into a toyland and all the superb editing and vibrant art direction - all the formal tricks Daldry uses to whip you up and work you over - risk being too much. After 45 minutes, it can feel like junk on a sundae. But the movie has a human coup. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyJan 19, 2012
In supporting roles, Bullock and Hanks deliver performances that are low-key and perfectly scaled. Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright are, likewise, excellent as a couple Oskar meets on his reconnaissance expedition. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 18, 2012
Luckily, Horn is so good -- as is Max von Sydow, in a wordless role -- that the film resonates in spite of the tear-jerking strings Daldry pulls. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 26, 2011
But the question hangs: Does this artificial, three-hankie scenario justify its 9/11 appropriations? Dry your eyes and decide for yourself. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyDec 26, 2011
Director Stephen Daldry has taken great care in looking at it through the eyes of a precocious New York City boy in a film filled with both sentiment and substance. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn LevyJan 19, 2012
The quality of the craft at the best moments of the film is undeniable. But it depends, finally, to how well you can embrace a young man named Horn -- a terrific gamble for a film and a subject of such size. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesJan 19, 2012
As a portrait of what happens to a family when its glue disappears, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wrung a bucket of tears out of me. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 26, 2011
Daldry and his screenwriter Eric Roth make the mistake of showing bodies falling from the Twin Towers – it's a mistake because its graphic power seems more exploitative than cathartic – but they otherwise thankfully refrain from pulling out all the stops. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumDec 20, 2011
A polarizing load of quirkiness in Extremely Loud gunks up (at least for this hometown mourner; your results may vary) what is at heart a piercing story. Read full review
63
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJan 20, 2012
All along, though, I was struck by an even stronger feeling, that I was sitting in on somebody else's therapy session. That's not a comfortable feeling -- and that makes Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close considerably less rewarding than it should be. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJan 19, 2012
He (Horn) gets so deeply into the whirling mind of Oskar Schell, dominating every scene he's in – which is almost every scene, period – that he lifts the movie out of the realm of "Forrest Gump"-like emotional manipulation. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJan 18, 2012
No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11. Such subjects overwhelm art. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 29, 2011
Solidly crafted, impeccably acted and self-important in the way that Oscar loves, Extremely Loud is also incredibly close to exploitation. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenDec 26, 2011
Yet these are precisely the sort of pictures that divide audiences over a central question: Are those strings being honestly played or just shamefully pulled? Of course, the answer determines whether you feel moved or merely manipulated. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 22, 2011
In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, director Stephen Daldry must walk a tricky line between poignancy and pathos. He occasionally slips into maudlin turf. Read full review
63
ObserverRex ReedDec 20, 2011
Certainly not a bad movie, but a disappointing one. It knocks itself out trying to break your heart, but it's too starched and blow-dried for its own good. Maybe if it had manipulated me less, it would have moved me more. Read full review
60
TimeMary PolsDec 22, 2011
Dodging the twin minefields of preciousness and an exploitative 9/11 premise, Horn races away with the movie and makes it believably, genuinely sad. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 20, 2011
We might have all felt like lost children for a while, but ten years later, the innocence is shameless. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeDec 18, 2011
With its re-enactments of that fateful day, Extremely Loud plays a bit too much like one of those perfectly lit, heart-tugging segments TV networks air during the Olympics. It hardly matters that Horn manages to give such a naturalistic, unmannered performance as the young Oskar when everything around him has been so deliberately orchestrated to provoke a specific reaction. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJan 21, 2012
This precious story line, adapted from a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, keeps shriveling up against the backdrop of a traumatized city; only gaunt Max von Sydow, as a mute old man who accompanies the young hero on his rounds, supplies the grave authority the premise demands. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJan 20, 2012
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is supposed to promote healing, but as they say in New York: close, but no cigar. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 19, 2012
It's a far better thing to remember Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close than to watch it. Looking back, much of what is irritating, precious and tiresome about the movie recedes and drops away, while all the movie's virtues, which are considerable, rise to consciousness. There are good things here - just be prepared to blast for them. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 19, 2012
The terror of Sept. 11 feels like little more than a dramatic hook, an easy way to make audiences cry. Oskar and the event defining him deserve better. Read full review
50
Village VoiceNick PinkertonDec 20, 2011
Such an abundance of "epiphanies," one after another, amount to a tactical assault on viewer sentiments. The deluge of tears is Daldry's idea of pathos, but to these eyes, it's Oscar-trolling 9/11 kitsch. Read full review
45
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 26, 2011
The only bright spot in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is Max von Sydow, as a mysterious, and mysteriously mute. Read full review
40
EmpireAngie ErrigoFeb 13, 2012
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. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid DenbyJan 9, 2012
Much of what Oskar says in the book is amusingly beside the point. Onscreen, however, the sound of a hyper-articulate boy talking semi-nonsense becomes very hard to take. Read full review
40
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 22, 2011
Yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 22, 2011
The result is that, as with Hanks' performance, what's missing - subtlety, truth, an earned sense of rebirth – is stronger than what's here. Despite all the connections in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it never connects to us the way we need it to. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 19, 2012
If actors this good cannot overcome their material, then we can only say: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock … Max von Sydow, Zoe Caldwell, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, John Goodman… thanks for your honest efforts in the service of a fundamentally dishonest weepie. Read full review
33
IndieWireEric KohnDec 26, 2011
If "Extremely Loud" came out in the weeks or months following 9/11, more audiences (and critics) might find an excuse to appreciate the way its soul-searching protagonist works through his grief. Ten years later, his struggle actually feels outrageously old-fashioned. Read full review
30
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 26, 2011
Renders Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling 2005 novel into unconvincing Hollywood mush. Read full review
25
Washington PostAnn HornadayJan 19, 2012
There's a fine line between precocious and insufferable, and it's a line continually crossed by Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJan 19, 2012
You need lots of gifted people chasing after the same bad idea to make a movie as colossally misguided as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Read full review
25
New York PostLou LumenickDec 23, 2011
About as artistically profound as those framed 3-D photos of the Twin Towers emblazoned with "Never Forget'' that are still for sale in Times Square a decade after 9/11. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundDec 22, 2011
This film buries its soul beneath its own pretentious rubble, and the youthful, labyrinthine mind in which it places viewers feels less like an offbeat vehicle for healing than it does a kaleidoscopic prison. Read full review
10
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 22, 2011
The production's penchant for contrivance is insufferable - not a single spontaneous moment from start to finish - and the boy is so precocious you want to strangle him. It's surely not the fault of Thomas Horn, the remarkable young man who plays him. Read full review
0
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasDec 22, 2011
It will always be "too soon" for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, which processes the immense grief of a city and a family through a conceit so nauseatingly precious that it's somehow both too literary and too sentimental, cloying yet aestheticized within an inch of its life. Read full review
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