E-Mail This Article to a Friend EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

102 MINUTES | KENDALL SQUARE + WEST NEWTON

The best thing about Liev Schreiber’s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s overrated, overwritten novel is that it has to leave out much of the self-besotted author’s worst excesses. What remains has charm but little originality or substance. A young American Jew, coyly named Jonathan Safran Foer (Elijah Wood), scours Ukraine for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during World War II. His guide is Alex (Eugene Hutz), a wild and crazy guy from Odesa who speaks funny English. Alex’s "blind" grandfather is the driver; grampa’s "seeing-eye bitch," who’s named "Sammy Davis Junior, Junior," completes the wacky crew, and that’s all you need to know about Foer’s sense of humor. Although Schreiber cuts to the chase, much of the pretentiousness, sentimentality, and magical-realist bullshit remains. Far from being illuminated, Everything is merely exaggerated.