The Other Feel-Bad Movie of Christmas
Every time the Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close trailer plays in the theater I have an equally incredible bad reaction. It's like I'm on a tiny bus and I'm allergic to peanuts and everyone is eating peanuts all around me and the bus is bound for somewhere I didn't want to go and maybe the driver is dead from all the peanuts and the bus is going off the road. In Delaware. I have had three of these rage-crying fits now, no joke, and I'm not sure I can keep going to the movie theaters until this thing is released and no longer being teased. The manipulation cuts like a knife! And this new trailer is actually more upsetting. (Mostly because it has bad voice-over.) Basically yes: "It looks like someone went and used 9/11 as a set-up to remake Pay It Forward." The book was criticized in some quarters (some loved it, of course!) on those same terms, and I'm pretty sure its evolution at the hands of the writer who brought you Forrest Gump (and also a couple decent movies) is not going to improve matters. BUT IT'S OSCAR SEASON, so it SMELLS LIKE OSCAR. (Or Oskar, as the main character is called.) OSKAR SEASON! But this will at least go down in history as, somehow, the first time Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock have worked together. (Though he doesn't get that much screen time DUE TO THE 9/11.) Hard to believe, right? I will let you try to prove me wrong, America's Sweethearts, but the emotional exploitation is off the charts. Seems like Green Mile made a baby with Old Yeller and then the director decided to fly a plane into it.
My friend and I noticed (and remarked on) this last week too – like the attacks themselves this was manipulation of a whole new order of magnitude.
We were seeing The Descendants, which while very enjoyable ultimately didn't deliver nearly the emotional payload of this trailer.
Don't the filmakers realize 9/11 actually happened to some people?
@laurel RIP Robert Pattinson.
And Tom Hanks too, apparently. That was a buzz kill.
@melis Whhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyywhensomanyhavesuffered?!
can i skip the movie and just pay someone ten bucks to kick me in the nuts. seems like it would have the same effect and not take two hours.
The Thing That Always Bugs Me About This Trailer Is How Much The Kid Enunciates Ev-Er-Y Single Thing. Like Every Word In The Title Is Capitalized Or Something.
The key opens the door to a better movie that's not exploitative trash, right?
Oh, Brewmeister Smith, how far you've fallen.
The one believable thing about this is that the hypothetical spawn of Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock probably would be just about this insufferable.
Also, when was the last time anyone hit Jonathan Safran Foer in the balls with a shaving cream pie? Because doing so really does make it better.
Is the 9/11 movie going to be the new Vietnam movie (maybe this time in 3D)? Because if this is the case, I'm going to excuse myself from the theater for the next ten years or so.
I can't watch movies about 9/11.
# A useful corrective for people who are too nostalgic for the 90s
# Paradoxically, also a great read for anyone who wants to revel in 90s nostalgia
# A loving/hateful portrait of the byegone-era East Village, full of Ukranian diners and dive bars and "street-ignorant white girls looking for a fix and trying to get up the courage to turn a trick"
And also, at the end of that preview, the kid tells Sandra Bullock that Tom Hanks said she "was such a good girl."
Dude, she's, like, 40.
Choire, your last sentence made me laugh out loud.
Now I feel like have to go to confession or something.
Only way that is more maudlin and humorless is if the kid's puppy dog gets lost in the rain. And then run over.
Nico Muhly did the score, at least?
(Which maybe makes this that much worse.)
Voiceover, eh? "In a world where the schmaltz is so thick you're not even safe on the 110th floor one man…"
Vive LaFontaine!