Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

If it means anything, Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - an adaptation of Jonathan Safran Froer's 2005 novel - is the lowest- rated film on the Rotten Tomatoes website to ever be nominated for a best picture Oscar.

Director: Stephen Daldry

Cast: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max Von Sydow, Viola Davis, Geoffrey Wright

Despite a mostly A-list cast, a top-drawer screenwriter in Eric Roth and Daldry (director of The Hours and The Reader) at the helm, this is a woefully inadequate translation of everything that was appealing in the novel to the screen.

Beginning with a slow-motion shot of a man falling from the Twin Towers, Roth's adaptation suffers from the same irrepressible sentimental urges that sabotaged his 2008 adaptation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It doesn't help that Daldry has a penchant for heavy-handed manipulation and heart-warming affirmation, as evidenced by his debut feature Billy Elliot.

That doesn't quite explain why a formula that's worked before should produce a film that's been so widely lambasted and is so overwhelmingly annoying. What does perhaps, is that the film's story, like the novel's, is set against the background of the tragedy of 9/11.

When Oskar Schell's father is killed in the attack on the Twin Towers, his son discovers a key hidden in a vase in his closet and - convinced that his father has left him a clue to uncover - he begins a search of New York for the lock the key must fit.

Along the way he meets a cast of characters who look at him with a kind of schmaltzy sympathy. It is a look usually reserved for adults when confronted in the movies by the grief of a child - and shot in a style reminiscent of advertisements for American values screened in-between CNN's coverage of the war on terror. One child's search for meaning in the wake of tragedy becomes a meaningless advertisement for the strength and goodwill of everyday New Yorkers.

He gives his best as the young hero, but there is something irritatingly precious about Thomas Horn, making you want to hit him on the head and send him home to his mother, played with stupefying, teary-eyed affectation by Sandra Bullock.

It's not that Safran Froer's material isn't worth adaptation, but in the hands of the team behind this one, what subtlety, humour and poignancy it had is crushed by the heavy-handedness of the treatment. Not to mention the general miscasting and a lack of reflection that reduces a post-Forest Gump-era event to the simplicities of an outdated approach.

By the time Oskar's quest is over and twists are revealed, it's hard to care. If anything, this is a film that is unfortunately a wasted opportunity and leaves you feeling that you've been hit with a hammer that's extremely loaded and incredibly crass.