The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Review

There are no spoilers in this review.

PLOT: Tells the story of Benjamin Button, a man who ages backwards with bizarre consequences.


THE GOOD: Story. So I finally got around to seeing the most nominated movie of the year and I liked it. When I first heard about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button over a year ago, I was immediately intrigued. The basic premise is capturing and most of the cast and crew were all people I've enjoyed in the past. Eric Roth and Robin Swicord created a winning story using F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1921 short story of the same name. The two stories differ largely, but I still liked the movie.


David Fincher. I want to point out that this movie is very unlike David Fincher. He's never made a movie like this before. He's certainly stepped out and made a tough movie about life and love. It's more of a movie you'd likely see Stephen Spielberg's name attached to, or Robert Zemeckis, or Ron Howard. I really hope Fincher can keep it up after this huge accomplishment.

Acting. The acting was pretty good all around. Yeah, Pitt and Blanchett are there, but it was the smaller performances that were much better. Brad Pitt's facial expressions are amazing and Cate Blanchett was good despite her accent being completely annoying. However, one performance that I thought deserved more praise than it got was from Jason Flemyng who plays Thomas Button, Benjamin's real dad. I thought he was involved in some of the most moving scenes of the film. I took a lot from the movie when it comes to forgiveness with his character. It also took me forever to realize where I had seen Flemyng before. He's played along side Brad Pitt before in Guy Ritchie's Snatch as his gypsy friend. "If ya want yer friend to hear ya, you'll have to talk a lot louder than that." Another performance that deserves praise is that of Taraji P. Henson who plays Queenie, the woman who finds and raises Benjamin, and who Benjamin refers to as his real mom. She gives off that loving warm feeling that all caring mothers seem to emanate. Really happy to see her nominated, but I don't think she'll win. The last actor who I thought was really good, but underrated, was Jared Harris who plays Captain Mike. Immediately recognized him from Fringe where he plays one of the most intriguing characters, but he's been in a ton of other stuff as well.

Messages. I just mentioned that the movie talks quite a bit about forgiveness, but also of change. In this movie, Benjamin's changes in his life occur every time an old man recalls one of the humorous seven times he was struck by lightning. I think we all go through phases of life and the change is not a subtle as we would like to believe. Going from baby to kid, kid to adult, adult to independent, independent to husband, husband to father were all individual steps that I'd like to think happened over time. But it really took just a few seconds for me to take that step into my new part of life. I might not have made the move on time, but I made it fast. Very much like the James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps nursery rhyme "Solomon Grundy". I'll talk more about this in a bit.


CGI. Really remarkable. I watched some of the behind the scenes look at how they took Brad Pitt's expressions and features and made his look old and young. You can barely even tell they had to generate his face with computers. And the young Brad Pitt looked so much like the young Brad Pitt. Scary, but cool. The only bad effects seemed to be of Benjamin when he was first born. Other than that, pretty fantastic.

Pacing. To be fair, I saw the whole movie in two separate sittings, so maybe I'm already encouraged to think this about the movie. I thought the pacing was quite good and I really would have liked to see more. I didn't feel like any of the scenes were dragged out. To strike the length of the movie is unfair. Fincher's previous movie, Zodiac, was 157 minutes long, which is nine minutes shorter than Ben Button, but just as good. No, it's better.


THE BAD: Unoriginal. We've all been hearing the comparisons to Forrest Gump. It's perfectly okay to see similarities. After all, Eric Roth did write both scripts. I also see connections with some of Roth's other scripts. The story about one man's life taking direction based off of his disability has been done plenty of times even before Gump. The problem isn't how characters (Captain Mike = Lieutenant Dan), events (WWII = Vietnam War), and symbols (hummingbird = feather) are similar, but rather how it's formulaic. I don't think it takes away too much from the movie, but recognize it as a flaw. It certainly won't be the last time we see a movie like this. Fellow directing nominee Danny Boyle wants to direct a movie based on Solomon Grundy which tells the story of a man who lives his life in a single week; each day representing one of the seven ages of man which comes from Shakepeare's famous "All the world's a stage" monologue in As You Like It. Boyle has delayed the film, possibly indefinitely, due to the similarities with Ben Button, but I still hope he makes it.


Benjamin. There are times where I felt Pitt's character was hollow. I don't think this is the actor's fault, but more of Roth and Fincher's. The narration is the only thing that informs us of the emotional connections Benjamin has to people and places, or even the occasional philosophical tidbit of insight into the nature of man. There are scenes where is seems that Benjamin is just watching something happen, not necessarily thinking, studying, learning, or observing. On some of the more emotional parts of the movie, he stands coldly by while watching it all transpire. It made me feel a disconnect from the character and the movie.


THE END: Benjamin Button is one of the best films of the year. It certainly would earn a place on my top ten if I had seen it last year. However, I don't think I would regard it as one of the best films ever made. I wasn't deeply moved or touched by the film, but I think it was crafted well and I think it hits on some important themes. The emotional connection wasn't really felt by me until near the end of the film. I recommend seeing the film, but without letting your expectations get too high. It doesn't deserve as many nominations as it got, it doesn't deserve to win Best Picture, and you won't ever see it on any AFI list. Gump trumps Button, but it's still an enjoyable film.


DISCUSS: Compared to the other Best Picture nominees, how would you rate Benjamin Button? What are some better movies about life that came out in 2008? What did you think of all the performances? Would you watch this again?