EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE
Written by Eric Roth
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Starring Thomas Horn, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow and Tom Hanks

Making movies about the September 11 tragedies is unquestionably tricky. You don’t want to gloss over the facts and you definitely don’t want to exploit the pain but you also have to ensure that your movie is not so bleak and depressing that no one ends up seeing it. EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, the latest film by Oscar nominee, Stephen Daldry (THE READER), does a pretty decent job of oscillating between the morose and the uplifting, without ever succumbing too much to either side, but it also never truly finds its voice as a result.

The story itself, adapted from the well regarded novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, is a poignant one. Young, precocious, Thomas Schell (played by Teen Jeopardy winner, Thomas Horn, in his first film), loses his father (Tom Hanks) in the September 11 attacks. Naturally, this causes his already rampant anxiety to expand greatly. He no longer takes trains, fears tall buildings and carries a tambourine around with him at all times to help ease his mounting tension. All of this makes his quest to find the lock for a key he found amongst his father’s belongings particularly difficult. Before his father passed away, he would orchestrate mysterious puzzles for his son to solve and Thomas sees this key as a way to keep his father alive just a little bit longer. Not surprisingly, he pushes away his mother (a touching Sandra Bullock) in the process and subsequently befriends a stranger (Max von Sydow, in an incredibly telling turn considering the character is mute) in an effort to replace his absent father figure. Across the board, the acting is quite understated and very respectful to the horror that inspired this story. The way the events unfold though is at times too whimsical to be fully believed.

What I found most moving about EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE was how perfectly it captured that newfound sense of danger, apprehension and confusion that didn’t exist in Western society before the World Trade Center towers collapsed. At nine years old, Thomas cannot make sense of what happened on that day. Heck, most adults couldn’t make sense of it. And so, without being able to understand how his father was taken from him when planes flew into buildings, he now fears most everything instead. The beauty in the final journey Thomas finds himself on, is that it not only brings him closer to his father, but it also brings him closer to healing without his even realizing it. Maybe Daldry will have the same effect on you.

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LARRY CROWNE

Written by Tom Hanks and Nia Vardalos

Directed by Tom Hanks

Starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and George Takei

Dr. Matsutani: They call them smart phones but only dummies use them in my class.

It’s nothing personal against Tom Hanks – I like the guy – but he would not be my first choice to write, direct and star in a feature about the difficulties one faces when one loses a thankless job in the middle of one’s life. Larry Crowne is uneducated, which employer, U-Mart, uses as an excuse to let the long time worker go. Larry decides to go back to college so this never happens again and there he gets a makeover, joins a scooter gang and falls in something that I think is supposed to resemble love with his teacher, Mercedes (Julia Roberts). By keeping the tone light and avoiding what should be the harsh reality of the situation, Hanks, the former everyman, only shows how far removed from the rest of us he now is.

To be fair, even though this is clearly a Hanks passion project, he should not bear the full brunt of the blame for how insipid LARRY CROWNE is. Some of that responsibility falls distinctly on the shoulders of his co-writer, and good friend, Nia Vardalos. You may remember Vardalos as the author and star of the biggest independent film of all time, MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. She played up stereotypes and clichés as much as possible back then and her lack of connection with what is real has not improved since. To call the “revelations” made in LARRY CROWNE simple would be itself an oversimplification. For instance, did you know that social networking is apparently responsible for ruining the attention spans of young people? Or more importantly, were you aware that student apathy in class has spread and apparently has now affected the teaching community as well? My personal favorite lesson learned in LARRY CROWNE is how the stuff we own eventually owns us. Clearly, I’m a much better person for having seen this.

This is a film about education but yet I learned absolutely nothing. This is a film about starting over and yet nothing about LARRY CROWNE felt remotely new. Perhaps when you’re as famous as Hanks, and backed by the equally famous Roberts no less, nobody dares tell you that what you’re making isn’t working. The tone is not serious, even though at times it certainly should be, but it is never actually funny either. It exists in some sort of film purgatory and forces us to suffer there with it. Maybe Hanks himself should consider going back to school; he clearly could stand to learn a thing or two about making movies and something I like to call real life.

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TOY STORY 3

Written by Michael Arndt

Directed by Lee Unkrich

Voices by Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty and Michael Keaton

Hamm: C’mon, let’s go see how much we’re going for on EBay. 

There comes a point in every boy’s life when he has to grow up.  Ok, fine.  There are many points in a boy’s life when he must do this but going off to college is certainly an undeniable turning point.  You leave behind your family, your friends and the only home you know, including a chunk of everything you own.  For young Andy, a boy we first met when he was just eight years old, leaving for college means putting away all the toys that brought him so many hours of enjoyment back in his day.  And so he throws Buzz, Rex, Slink and the rest of them in a bag destined for the attic.  Some have said that after sitting in their own attic, the people at Pixar should have left their very first success, TOY STORY, exactly where they left it eleven years ago.  Fortunately for all of us though, the people at Pixar will never fully grow up.  The toys are out of the attic and they’re better than ever!

Letting go, dealing with new realities, distancing yourself so as to avoid ever getting hurt – these are just a few of the touching themes that are subtly told in TOY STORY 3.  The Academy Award winning writer of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, Michael Arndt, follows up his first success with what could very likely net him another trophy.  Arndt understands that adventure can be subjective – that what might seem small and unimportant to some is the biggest challenge others will ever face.  He also understands that adventure is made perilous when those involved have much to lose.  For our favourite toys, the loss is particularly significant – they are about to lose their reason for being.  Being relegated to the attic means that these toys will no longer be played with, that they will no longer be able to bring joy to their favourite guy, Andy.  So as Andy lets go of them, they must learn to let go of him as well.

Toys passing the time in the attic might not make for a very exciting film though.  (Mind you, if anyone could make it exciting, it would be these guys.)  Instead, the toys find themselves donated to a nursery school.  Well, most of them anyway; our man Woody (Tom Hanks) was selected to go off to college with Andy but, as luck would have it, Woody seems to have found himself lost and on the loose once again.  While Woody tries to make his way home alone, his pals are stuck in nursery hell, where kids play with you for hours, sure, but they also have no regard for these toys because they just aren’t their own.  First time full-fledged Pixar director, Lee Unkrich (Unkrich previously co-directed FINDING NEMO, MONSTERS INC., and the second TOY STORY film), ties these two storylines together seamlessly and charges the entire picture with an intensity that never lets up and culminates in a climax so dire that it catches the viewer off guard and triggers an emotional response that cannot be contained.  Just ask the guy sitting next to me.

TOY STORY 3 is triumphant!  It carries the depth and hilarity that one has come to expect from Pixar and then carries it even further still.  Even though I say it again and again when I review their films, they are constantly outdoing themselves.  Here, they’ve achieved the extremely rare feat of making threequel a decade after the last installment that actually surpasses both films that came before it.  Even though they’re playing with toys, their maturity continues to expand and their visual mastery continues to break their own barriers.  Their films work because they have soul.  The spirit of TOY STORY lives in that special bond between a boy and his toys.  Back when life was simple, they were all we needed and, according to Pixar, we were all they needed too.  And by taking these toys out of the attic and doing right by them one more time, Pixar incites that rare and wonderful feeling of nostalgic warmth that one gets all over their body when find themselves unexpectedly playing again with their favourite toys.

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