Review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) by Katies — 07 Feb 2009

Ponderous, boring. BB's reverse aging actually contributes little to the plot, since he has the mind of a young person in the beginning, and of an old person at the end, so what you're left with is just a conventional life story that has no real individuating elements, just a bunch of nearly randomly assembled elements pulled out of the grabbag of movie cliches: overwrought military death scenes already a subject for parody in Tropic Thunder.

The everything could have been different montage before the tragic accident. Etc. The only real unique interest in the reverse physical aging plot could have come in the last 20 years of Button's life, and there was a potentially good short movie inside this unfortunately long one.

It would have involved B having a continuous relationship with his family. An interesting and courageous movie could have shown him as an experienced man in a child's body, treated like a child in society, eventually not allowed to make his own decisions, interacting with his child in the body of a child, having sex with his aging wife as a teenager until they have to stop--the conflict between desire, repulsion, and social restraint there *could* have been an amazing story.

But it wasn't to be. And further it was poorly cast; Pitt and Blanchett have no chemistry and aren't plausible as a couple, and Pitt seems a little too dumb in his affect to play "simple" without becoming totally insipid and boring.

I didn't like much Forrest Gump much, and in fact thought it's entire value system (Forest's disengagement is purity/Jenny's engagement is corruption) was messed up, but at least in its messed up value system it was an interesting social text.

This was just maudlin kitsch.