Just watched this, having known nothing about it beforehand, and thought it was a great movie. I was shocked to see it was mostly slammed by critics; on rottentomatoes the critic score is 4.5 (audience score 6.5). tmdb user score is a healthier 7.0 which is around what I'd give it.

The movie is an interesting twist on the standard tale of loss/mourning. The story is told through the eyes of an autistic, unemotional child so it spares us the melodramatic weepy scenes. One of the early scenes is at the funeral where he doesn't shed a tear, instead being preoccupied with the coffin being empty. The film then focuses on the kid's unusual way of coping: he invents a quest for himself, to find the lock for a mysterious key he found, in a metaphoric attempt to make everything fit into place. It's a movie about trying to make sense of the senseless.

Acting is rock solid all around: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, the kid himself (who isn't exactly likeable but that's the point; it's an unsentimental treatment), and an outstanding performance by Max Von Sydow as the mysterious mute tenant (maybe a nod toward 1958 "The Magician" where he played a mute magician?).

But critics really trashed this, with several calling it the worst film ever nominated for an Academy Award (it lost of course). From what I gather, they thought it was too sappy for a story about 9/11 and were deeply offended by it "exploiting" that. But the funny thing is the movie conspicuously avoids going into detail about 9/11 (other than what a young kid would observe). As for sappy, the unemotional kid puts the brakes on that. Was it just a case of "too soon"? I feel like if this was released today it would be a hit.