‘Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close’ Trailer
Here’s the trailer forStephen Daldry’s adaptation ofJonathan Safran Foer’s novelExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close, based on a script byEric Roth. The movie has been a curiosity for me for months in part because the book is a piece of post-modernism that doesn’t lend itself easily to adaptation, and in part because Daldry chose a non-actor,Thomas Horn, to play the central role of 11-year old Oskar Schell. Sure, he’s got established stars likeTom HanksandSandra Bullockas buffers, but that’s still a ballsy move. Get the first taste of what came of that big risk-taking, after the break.
To recap one quick detail, Thomas Horn was a youngJeopardy!winner, and that exposure lead to his casting in this film. He looks solid interacting with Tom Hanks, who plays his father, but his voice-over in the trailer doesn’t sound natural to me at all. Layer in U2’s ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ and my warning bells start to go off.
One of my fears with this adaptation was that it might turn into a simplified and very manipulative tearjerker. While Eric Roth has written movies I like (MunichandThe Insider, with the latter being a personal favorite) he’s also written scripts likeForrest GumpandThe Curious Case of Benjamin Buttonwhere, for me, he went way deep into sentiment in a way that hurt the story. And with Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot,The Reader) directing a story for which 9/11 is a central event, I was afraid that tendency would really come forward.
The trailer suggests that it has. Will this film be strong enough to work anyway? The trailer plays as overtly manipulative, but that’s a trailer’s job. If the film feels the same way, might be difficult not to recoil from it.
I think this trailer is going to be a polarizing one. I can see some people really taking to it, while for others the sentiment, the song, the voice-over, and overt 9/11 elements will be a bit turn-off. How did it play for you?
