Yes, it appears from the trailers and hype that "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is a Tom Hanks-Sandra Bullock all-out acting fest, but they have little screen time in the film. "Incredibly Close" more so chronicles the aftermath of how a young boy goes searching for answers after his father dies at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Thomas Horn, 14, is a Hollywood newcomer who had only acted in a school play, but whose appearance on "Kids Jeopardy" (he won $31,800 in July 2010) got the attention of the film's producer Scott Rudin. For a debut acting gig, you can't get any bigger than this. Horn stars as 9-year-old Oskar Schell and "Incredibly Close" is entirely Oskar Schell's movie.

Based on a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, the film relives what Oskar calls "the worst day." When he's let out of school early because of events in New York City, the latchkey kid comes home to messages waiting on a tape machine from his father, Thomas (Hanks), who just happened to have a breakfast meeting at the World Trade Center. The fact that they've established Mr. Schell as a family jeweler who rarely steps outside of his safety zone makes it odd that he would have a meeting in the World Trade Center on "the worst day," but he does.

A year after his death, as Oskar is rummaging around in his father's closet, he finds a hidden key inside a small brown envelope with the words Black written on the outside. Recreating scavenger hunts that his father sent him on, Oskar maps out every person with the last name Black (all 472 of them) living in the boroughs of New York City to discover who may own the key. It's an effort for Oskar to somehow feel closer to his father if he finds out what the key unlocks.

His adventure is a heightened panic attack. Borderline autistic and anxiety ridden, he wears a gas mask that his grandmother gave him after 9/11 and he shakes a tambourine to calm himself. In a constant monotonous voiceover, Oskar counts the people he's seen, taking photographs of each of them and telling their story. For moviegoers, it ends up being a sea of faces and a mishmash of stories, except for a few that are plucked from the mountain of information to create a subplot.

Oskar befriends an old man (Max von Sydow) who rents a room from Oskar's grandmother. He tells the mute, who only answers questions with words written on the palms of his hands, that he picks his skin until it bleeds.

He also becomes a regular at the home of Mrs. Black (Viola Davis). Although her life is crumbling and she's in the midst of a divorce, she answers the door to the strange boy, welcoming him in and crying on his shoulder about the ruins of her marriage.

The stories are mostly contrived, but "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" takes an interesting view of 9/11, not dwelling on the events of the day as much as what it left in its aftermath. That is the movie at its best.

At its worst, its main character is so overwhelming that it's difficult to care about his quest. He screeches at his mother, tells an elderly man that there's no time during their trek across Manhattan for bathroom breaks, loses his temper in the middle of a key manufacturing plant, and keeps messages hidden from his mother that would have given her the last chance to hear her husband's voice. Frankly, you want Oskar to find the key just so he stops badgering people.

The filmmakers also made a poor choice in their constant replay of Oskar's recurring image of his father falling from the towers. It doesn't tug at the heartstrings, it pulls at them uncomfortably.

And so does most of the movie. Rather than using an opportunity to comfort the collective conscience over a time in America's history that still remains fresh, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" forces uncomfortable feelings brought to vivid life in the form of manipulation. The only tears to be shed about this cloying film are that it was the first for Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock as co-stars. Hopefully, it won't be the last.