I went into the Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close movie with expectations you might describe as extremely low and incredibly braced for a bunch of assholes ruining my favorite book.  After watching the admittedly hokey and dumbed down trailer featuring Sandra Bullock and a blue eyed kid with strange inflections, I was fully prepared for a merciless cinematic slaughter of the worst kind. However, I had to see it because a.) I had made a promise to a friend and I try to follow through on those, and b.) I have terrible self control. I knew that I would not be at peace knowing that there was a J Foer movie I hadn’t seen. These are the kinds of things I care about, okay. Stop laughing. 

AND (because you are all so deeply invested in my opinions, I will reveal) I was pleasantly surprised! They were all strong performances, and although I wasn’t sure whether I liked the actor playing Oskar at first, he grew on me big time.  Especially during emotional high points, the kid demonstrated definite acting chops.  

One of the reasons this book hit me so hard in the first place is that I see so much of myself in it.  I’ve always connected with Oskar for some reason, but the movie only made it more pronounced. Something about watching him throw himself on his bed or invent things to stop himself from suffering or think through every detail of every puzzle obsessively until you know he’s destroying himself. But he can’t help it, and neither can you, and this hit you at just the right time in your life. You just want to reach through the screen to this beautiful creature and tell him to stop. And give him a hug. You know that you are you in the real world and this person and his world were invented and do not exist but somehow it doesn’t matter at all.

As you can imagine I cried mad hard core. Waterproof eyeliner was, contrary to my original opinion, well worth the 9$. 

There were a bunch of changes from the book, but I thought that most of them were interspersed exceptionally naturally. For the most part they stayed true to the authors’ intent.  The integrity of the story was not compromised to dumb Hollywood prerequisites and Nicholas Sparks-esque cliches, which was really important to me going in.  The entire “to my unborn child” section was cut out, which was a bit of a bummer for me because I would’ve liked to see a black and white flashbacky Dresden section, but I understand that audiences do not like to hold their pee for four hours while watching numerous genocides play out, so I was understanding.

Also, there were a few parts that I thought were a little much, but I gave them some leeway for being a big budget film.

The cinematography was fantastic. Such clear pictures. 

I liked it a lot. Go see it, and bring tissues if you have a heart.