The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The curious thing about Benjamin Button is that he is born with the body of an old man, a body which gets younger as he gets older.   Aside from that curious fact, Benjamin Button led a pretty normal life.   One might even call it dull.   One might even call the movie about his life “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a painful exercise in dullness.  

Benjamin grows up in a nursing home, looking and dressing like the ancients around him.   He gets a job on a tugboat, and then goes with the tugboat captain to Russia, where he has an affair with a married woman.   The tugboat captain enrolls the entire crew in the Navy during World War II, and they — almost accidentally – sink a submarine.   Benjamin goes home, falls in love with a childhood friend, meets his real dad, gets married, gets his wife pregnant, and runs away from the responsibility of raising a child.   All while growing younger, instead of older.   Curious.   

It is truly amazing just how utterly and completely director David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth have managed to waste the premise of this movie.  When a child grows up in a nursing home, surrounded by old people and completely estranged from his own peers, it ought to affect the way he relates to people his own age, and what he thinks of friendship.   When a 16 year old boy has his first sexual experience in a brothel with a prostitute who thinks he’s 60, it ought to affect the way he understands sex, and women.    When his first romance is with a woman in her 40′s, weary of her life and her husband, it ought to affect the way he thinks about love and intimate relationships.   The curious, and completely unforgiveable, thing about “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is that none of these things happen, or are even hinted at.   Benjamin Button grows up a surprisingly well-adjusted, kind, thoughtful, absolutely normal young man – only, in an old man’s body.   What a waste.  

“Benjamin Button” has been compared by quite a few people to Forrest Gump.   Well, it has the same insistently “magical” score, and the attention to period detail across the years.  But interesting things happened to Forrest Gump.  He shook the President’s hand.   He played ping pong in China.   He ran across the country, for heaven’s sake.   Exactly one interesting thing happens to Benjamin Button – he crashes his tug boat into a German submarine.   “Forrest Gump” was a survey of a certain period of our country’s history, with the main character serendipitously right in the middle of things.   Poor Benjamin hardly seems aware that anything interesting is even going on around him.   The style of his clothes change as the years pass, but that’s about it.   “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is incredibly dull, but don’t worry: it’s also really really long, clocking in at 166 minutes.   Here’s some advice: drink coffee before you go to see it.   Several cups.   Not only will it keep you awake, it’ll give you excuses to escape to the bathroom every once in a while.     

This is Brad Pitt’s most wooden and dull performance since “Meet Joe Black” (the movies have a lot in common – both are about stiff protagonists “experiencing” the world.)   I think Pitt’s a fine actor, but he wasn’t given much to work with here – and quite often he’s so hidden behind makeup and/or digital effects, that it’s hard to imagine him having much room to act.    He’s nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, which is only the seventeenth most baffling thing about “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”   I’ll admit I’m conflicted; I really thought his performance as Jesse James last year was one of the best of the year, and he didn’t even get nominated.   So maybe he can win a makeup Oscar this year.   (Ha, a “makeup” Oscar.  Unintentional pun there.)   

I will give credit to the visual effects department; it is fascinating to watch the reverse aging process happen on Brad Pitt’s face and body.   I don’t know how they did it, especially as he becomes younger.   This movie should definitely win an Oscar for visual effects.   Unfortunately, it’s nominated for 10 other Oscars as well as visual effects, and doesn’t even come close to deserving any of those.   Really, the visual effects are the only interesting part of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,”   and that puts it in a class with movies like “Beowulf,”  “Speed Racer,”   and “The Spirit.”   None of which got nominated for Best Picture, or anything else besides Visual Effects, and rightly so.   What is the Academy thinking?  

Recommended

• If you’ll watch anything with Brad Pitt in it.  
• If you like dull movies, and taking naps in theaters. 
• If you’re really into visual effects.