“Extremely Mawkish and Incredibly Annoying”
When I saw that Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock were starring together in a movie, I … bleccchh …and just hoped it didn’t involve a scooter gang. Then they introduced a precocious young boy! And thennnn, there go the towers. Throw in the unapologetically maudlin and sappy tearjerker of a too-perfect father’s death story and I was ready to pay not to see it.
I love a good bad review, so I was happy to see David Denby give me even more reasons to stay home and save 16 ArcLight bucks. Yes, I’m delighting in putting down a movie I’ve never seen. No, I don’t care. The trailer alone with that old man and the Yes/No hands sends me running.
Favorite review quotes:
“As he rushes across a bridge, or through the streets, he shakes a tambourine to ward off terror, which is funny and touching exactly once.”
“After a while, we find ourselves thinking not of grief but of entitled kids who have been praised for every bright remark they’ve ever made.”
“When Oskar starts to play the messages on the machine for the old man, he signals the boy to stop—after all, Thomas Schell is his son. He wants the boy to shut up, and, with all the sympathy in the world, the audience may wish the same.”
