All this says is These two are in it’.
The most curious thing concerning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is just how critics talked themselves into finding reasons to praise it. I mean it had the star power in Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, the directorial genius of David Fincher, and a genuinely odd plotline about a central character that ages in reverse.
The reality is that this is a Forrest Gump clone without the hooks, meaning a film as boring as all hell. It has a drunken ship’s captain, a strange passion in the form of buttons (was shrimp in Gump) and a recurring motif of a doomed romance.
The only curiosity is the makeup, and yes Brad Pitt looks old in this, and young in this, as does Cate Blanchett, only in the more normal way.
This is a strangely maudlin, passionless and over-long affair, possibly thinking the premise and the special effects will do some of the heavy lifting. Despite growing increasingly younger Brad Pitt always seems to play Benjamin Button as an old soul. Similarly Cate Blanchett is the lifelong object of his desire and affection, though she spends much of the film lying on her own death bed.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tells a tale of a lifetime only remarkable due to the nature of his maturing, with the result – somewhat predictably – being a film most unremarkable in nature.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. There’s little to be curious about here. It starts disappointing and doggedly holds its path.
