You need lots of gifted people chasing after the same bad idea to make a movie as colossally misguided as <span class="italic">Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close</span>. This sort of train wreck is not the result of ordinary hackwork or mere incompetence. This is a failure on a much larger, deeper scale, an example of what can happen when artists view themselves as superior to ordinary people and decide to impart their wisdom on the masses.