That was an excellent one.

Just perfect...

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

This is one of the better films that extrapolates from that horrible day on September 11, 2001 in a moving fictional story. Although sentimental in tone, it is difficult not to admire the stellar cast and the clever plotting of the film.The principal conceit of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is the process of a search that is foreshadowed at the start of the film of the young Oskar Schell taking the challenge of his dad to search for a non-existent sixth borough of New York. That search transitions into a search for the missing box that will be unlocked from a key left by the father prior to his death on 9/11.The little kid who plays the role of Oskar was described in the DVD bonus segment as a child genius who learned Mandarin and won a bundle on the television show Jeopardy, prior to being recruited for the film. The mantra of Oskar is "never stop looking"--words that were circled on a newspaper clipping left behind by the father.My favorite character in the film was the Renter, an elderly man from the old country who befriends Oskar and helps him on his quest. Max Von Sydow was terrific in the role of the "silent" character, whose past life is never revealed in the film. Could the Renter be the father of the dad, whose name appears on the logo of the family jewelry business, Schell & Son Jewelers?SPOILER ALERT: The mother character, played effectively by Sandra Bullock, loved the son so much that she was shadowing his every move in the long search through the boroughs of New York for the missing lock. She met with the various Black members on the son's checklist, preparing the people for his visit. Unfortunately, this moving part of the story led to a major plot hole, as the couple who owned the vase and ran the estate sale should have been alerted to the importance of the key by the mother's visit, prior to the arrival of the son. There were other instances where the film stretched credibility. It tended to venture into the area of the supernatural, just falling short of a film like "The Sixth Sense" in the improbable search of young Oscar and the connection of sixth borough plot with the lock-and-key. It was almost as if the Renter could have been a figment of Oskar's vivid imagination. At some point, the filmmakers had the obligation to have everything make sense in such a realistic film.

(Flash Review)Imagine you are an impressionable 12 year old or so and your father is taken from you in the worst ever attack on American soil? This is a story about how this boy, with some sort of OCD behavior, attempts to cope and deal with the loss of his father. Based on various factors and his father's influence, he searches all over Manhattan for a lock to a key he found in his father's closet and comes across all walks of life; needle in a haystack. This was a crisply and smartly edited movie with good emotional moments. And it took a unique a tasteful angle on a very tragic situation. The boy carries the movie as Hanks and Bullock, his parents, are only in a few scenes. Neat little take on that event.

Although there was no such thing as an actual Thomas Schell who died that day, it really shows the reality of how it shatters peoples lives. With Thomas Horn playing as a boy with high functioning autism, it is a HUGE struggle to get though life even more, especially losing your father in a terror attack. That didn't stop him to look for where that key was belonged to and honestly, people like myself who have this condition are misunderstood of the way we behave towards others. Oscar really is a good role model for anyone who has this condition.Good man Jonathan Safran Foer for creating this book and of course, make it recognised as a film we know today. RIP to those who lost their lives on that faithful day <3

I think the key to a proper reception of the film is noticing, that it is not only about 9/11, and maybe mostly not about it. Instead of 9/11 any disaster that took life of boy's father could be pictured here. It would be only a background. The film is about something else (hard to choose one word to describe it, but most appropriate for me would be "the search"). Many negative reviews about the movie seem to be a result of that narrow way of seeing it. Also, boy's precise talk is not artificial - it might be a symptom of some form of Asperger syndrome, linked with his other behaviors.The film is moving and cleansing. Also, it is exciting - the search going further and further makes the outcome much desired. Worth watching.