The 9 Most Scathing Critical Responses to Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Nearly a month after its Oscar-qualifying run found it alienating critics in New York and Los Angeles (and almost two months since indelibly, ignominiously entering the zeitgeist as The Daldry), this week finally finds Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close reaching theaters nationwide. And while roughly half of reviewers to date have lauded director Stephen Daldry's adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer novel, the other half has issues -- big issues -- with everything from lead actor Thomas Horn to Daldry's handling of the book's central tragedy of 9/11. It's no Jack and Jill, but that's no reason not to throw on a raincoat and go frolic in the bile. Wish you were here, David Denby!
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REVIEW: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close? More Like Utterly Dull and Mostly Insufferable

In 2005, when Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was published, Walter Kirn, writing in the New York Times Book Review, summed up the book's "grand ambition" this way: "To take on the most explosive subject available while showing no passion, giving no offense, adopting no point of view and venturing no sentiment more hazardous than that history is sad and brutal and wouldn't it be nicer if it weren't." Kirn couldn't, at that point, have seen Stephen Daldry's film adaptation of the book. But with that sentence, he pretty much wrote the review in advance.

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