The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
The worst part of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the non-linear storyline. On paper, it makes sense to film a movie about a man who ages backwards by cutting back and forth between the past and present, but this movie is chopped up with lengthy scenes of a dying, old woman, Julia Ormond, in a hospital bed talking to her granddaughter. These scenes do not advance the story, and all they serve to do is severely depress the audience as it’s revealed the hospital is also a hurricane shelter as its inhabitants await Hurricane Katrina. The actual story has absolutely nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina, and I’ll never understand why these sections were included. The running time of the film is quite long, clocking in at nearly three hours. Had all the modern scenes been cut, nothing would have been lost but the audience’s boredom and propensity to look at their watches.
The great parts of this movie are, of course, Brad Pitt’s performance and the special effects team that helped transform him from an elder to a teenaged boy. When given the chance to act, he’s always very good, and catching him between Ocean’s Eleven movies is a treat. The premise of a man’s entire life being robbed from him is tragic, but as he’s abandoned by his family and raised by Taraji P. Henson, he’s forced to make the best of things and take what he can from his unusual life. As a younger man (looking older), he meets a little girl. She grows up to be Cate Blanchett, and when they meet again when they’re closer in age, they fall in love.
If anyone’s actually read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original short story, they’ll realize this movie only took the title and the main character’s strange aging affliction in its adaptation. The actual story is completely different. Cate Blanchett’s character doesn’t even exist – and neither do the modern hospital room scenes! Benjamin Button is not left on anyone’s doorstop, but instead lives out as much of a normal life as he can and bonds with his father. However, screenwriter Eric Roth tried to pay homage to the classic author by naming the love interest Daisy, and by using language that sounded like Fitzgerald might write. The sequence that traces a car’s tires all the way back to an inferior rubber batch at the factory sounds exactly like it came out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Don’t know what part of the movie I’m talking about? Then go rent it and find out. But keep your remote handy. Those modern scenes are so unnecessary.
More Cate Blanchett movies here!
The great parts of this movie are, of course, Brad Pitt’s performance and the special effects team that helped transform him from an elder to a teenaged boy. When given the chance to act, he’s always very good, and catching him between Ocean’s Eleven movies is a treat. The premise of a man’s entire life being robbed from him is tragic, but as he’s abandoned by his family and raised by Taraji P. Henson, he’s forced to make the best of things and take what he can from his unusual life. As a younger man (looking older), he meets a little girl. She grows up to be Cate Blanchett, and when they meet again when they’re closer in age, they fall in love.
If anyone’s actually read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original short story, they’ll realize this movie only took the title and the main character’s strange aging affliction in its adaptation. The actual story is completely different. Cate Blanchett’s character doesn’t even exist – and neither do the modern hospital room scenes! Benjamin Button is not left on anyone’s doorstop, but instead lives out as much of a normal life as he can and bonds with his father. However, screenwriter Eric Roth tried to pay homage to the classic author by naming the love interest Daisy, and by using language that sounded like Fitzgerald might write. The sequence that traces a car’s tires all the way back to an inferior rubber batch at the factory sounds exactly like it came out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Don’t know what part of the movie I’m talking about? Then go rent it and find out. But keep your remote handy. Those modern scenes are so unnecessary.
More Cate Blanchett movies here!