The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

After a long wait, I was finally able to see the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I want to say I saw a preview/heard of this movie approximately a year earlier, so to me, it was highly anticipated. I spoke to a few people about the movie before I had the opportunity to watch it and would agree with several of their points. First off, just to be clear, I am a HUGE Brad Pitt fan and think he's one of the great actors of our time, so I'm going to obviously be quite biased.

What did I hear about the movie beforehand? It's been done, it's just like Forrest Gump. True? To a certain extent, I can see how individuals would place a parallel between the two movies. What else did I hear... oh right, its a VERY long movie, but it seems to fly by. True? Absolutely. It's now 3 am and I had no idea that it was this late. Granted, telling a life story of a person is going to be quite time intensive.

Well, I was always fascinated by this short story since I heard of it as a little kid. Shame on me, since I never actually read it, but I think its about time I did. The story of the movie is probably one of the most innovative stories when it comes to just plain creativity. From that stand point, I think the movie has a lot of pull and it kept me interested. I was curious to see how they were going to angle the end of his life, since if you grow younger as you age, does that mean you shrink to a baby's size or do you just turn into a very grown-up sized baby?

I think a parallel that must be placed on the movie is to Titanic. If you think about it, both stories are told by old women who are nearing the end and revealing stories of their lives to their daughter/grand daughter for the very first time. I was a little disappointed that the director wanted to go this route for the movie, since its something that in fact has been done, but at the same time, I don't think it detracted from the script. There were several interesting parts to the movie, and I won't get into them in too much detail since I'm sure all 2 of my readers are always excited to go see the movies I review. (This writing is purposeful right?) I really liked the portion of the movie where Ben explains how several separate events can cause of chain reaction. I know that has been done before, but I thought they did it well in the movie. Secondly, I think the crowd favorite character was the old man who discusses how often he's been struck by lightning (7) since they show a mini clip of what he was doing each time it occurred.

I think that the timeline of the movie was kind of was uneven. Between his first love and finding Daisy, he dropped in age a great deal. Also, it would have been interesting to see more of his vagrant days on his own, near the end of his life.

Overall, I must say the movie kept me captivated throughout the full 3 hours. I enjoyed the portion of the story that revolved around his father. I think its mostly because in the book that I started to write (and abandoned) included father issues that are resolved before he passes. The scene of him carrying his father to the dock that he enjoyed as a young man will bring tears to many. The story is full of drama and humor and although it was not critically acclaimed, this manatee will give it his vote of confidence. I had extremely high expectations going in the film, which sadly were not reached, however, I think many will find this to be a 'good' movie.

3.5 Manatees.