The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Critical Review

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Director: David Fincher
Starring : Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchette, Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton

Plot:At once epic in scope and intimate in detail, David Fincher's THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON is certainly the director's most emotional film to date (though FIGHT CLUB and SEVEN don't offer much in the way of competition). Loosely based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, this romantic drama tells the tale of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), born in 1918 in New Orleans as a baby with wrinkles, cataracts, and arthritis. Benjamin will age backwards, getting younger as he watches those around him growing older. Included in that group are his adoptive mother, Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), and Daisy (Cate Blanchett), the love of his life whom he meets when she is just a little girl and he is an old man. They age in reverse, but despite Benjamin's globe-trotting adventures, their lives repeatedly intersect. (rottentomatoes.com)

Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was the final 2009 Academy Awards best picture nominee that I had left to see. At which point I can officially give my opinion as to which film should have won the award. More on that later. Initial thoughts had me frowning upon this film as within the first half hour brought back bad memories of Bubba and Forrest. I know that I am going to be in the minority with this opinion but I hated the movie Forest Gump and was surprised that I stayed awake through the whole film. With a storytelling aspect similar to that in The Princess Bride and a similar whacked up southern accent/lifelong story that we saw in Forrest Gump I was not looking forward to the remaining 2 hours and 16 minutes of the film. To my surprise, it turned out to be a much more captivating story than some dude who showed LBJ his butt.

I'll start off with the things that bugged me about the movie, because they were few and far between. First off it was 2 hours 46 minutes long. The story had a lot of depth to it so it kept you interested, but even the best directors of all time realize that a film should be cut off at just over 2 hrs. The only other thing that stuck out to me was the interesting sound mixing that they attempted while the children were young. With the interesting timeline that was present in this movie it seemed that the sound mixers and producers of this film used an interesting technique to correlate the voices between the young and old actors. It stuck out to me most when we first met Daisy as a young 5 year old girl. It seemed as if they dubbed the two voices of young Daisy and old Daisy together in an effort to make them sound the same. The interesting technique stuck out to me, but didn't necessarily ruin anything for me. You also got a small dose of this later in the film when Benjamin was a young child. Maybe I am nitpicking again because overall it really was not that big of a deal.

Now that we got that small detail out of the way, I really, really enjoyed this movie! I swear that director David Fincher must have studied Forest Gump and hypothesized how to make it even bigger and better. There was so much depth to this story and that is why it was able to hold my attention for almost 3 hours. The story of Benjamin Button is being read from his diary to a sick and dying Daisy as hurricane Katrina is looming in the distance. This story telling method that they chose to use was very appealing to me as it reminded me of one of my childhood favorites, The Princess Bride. Most of you know that I am huge fan of the show LOST, thus I have learned to pay attention to a lot of the details in movies and shows. There were a bunch subtle little pieces of story line that kept making their way to the surface in this film. Throughout the film we are reminded that one of the old men that lived in Benjamin's home "had been struck by lightning 7 times." I loved this aspect as each one of these occurrences were depicted as flashbacks and played a part in Benjamin's view on the world and the story of his life. I really like how we visually got to see these flashbacks as if we were tapping into one characters memory or another characters imagination. We walk through life with this interesting young man and witness as his experiences shape him into the boy that he will soon become. We feel his pain, his happiness, his disappointment, and we are kindly reminded that "we all end up in diapers" just as he does on the screen.

With two intertwining time lines, basically working in opposite directions, the casting, special effects and makeup crews had a tough task ahead of them in taking on this film. They found a way to make all of the actors that played Benjamin look like Brad Pitt and all those who played Daisy look like Cate Blanchette. It was incredible how they took an actor and actress who are in their forties accurately look like they were 17 and 65 in the same film. Whatever makeup or technology that they used to make the different actors and actresses look the same is amazing and will have a place in movie history for a long time.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and if I were part of the academy that had a vote for best film I would have voted for this film over the winner Slumdog Millionaire. From being visually appealing to having a deep and engaging story this film had it all and was one of my favorite of the year thus far. I would highly recommend it to those that have the patience for a long movie and would rate this in at 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 stars.