The Curious Case of Benjamin Button **

The Curious Case of Bejamin Button is curious, yes. But also ordinary. The film in which I have anticipated so mightily (an unhealthy obsession to be honest) in my eyes, ended up far too flawed for me to like it. There were redeeming qualities, and you can perhaps assume what the qualities are that I speak of, yet certain underlying factors made the film less than average and forgettable.

David Fincher's film is homey and sweet in the sense of the setting. You really felt this was Benjamin's home, this New Orleans neighborhood, and everytime the film came back to this place, you felt comfortable, like Benjamin. This feeling can be attributed to the film's utterly stunning art direction and costume design. The world created in the film was incredibly realistic. Did they film in 1930s Louisiana? Also, Claudio Miranda's (I'm naming my son Claudio Miranda...) cinematography was a perfect blend of being artistically beautiful, along with not being all in your face.

The acting was consistently good, spanning the whole cast. Brad Pitt's performance was impressive. Focus on that wording. I didn't say it was great, but you cannot help but be impressed in how epic that performance was and he never was bad or anywhere close to it. Throughout the performance, you would notice little subtleties, especially when he played a child. This performance was not flashy or at all well-written (we'll get to that later), but Pitt made the most of this character and fleshed it out as well as he could. Certainly Oscar-worthy.

Cate Blanchett was the same drill as Pitt. Very good, a flashier character and dreadfully-written. Again, a good, Oscar-worthy performance. Taraji P. Henson was just average, yet was kind of the crowd-pleaser. She garnered a decent amount of laughs, but had a minor to zero emotional punch (we'll get to that later).

Continuing with the good, the make-up was stunning. Duh. The visual effects were a sight. Maybe the best I've ever seen, to be honest. These effects may end up setting the industry standard for this decade.

And you see, the film looks good and performances are well-done. On the surface, it is a "well-made, quality film." The film is like a snowglobe (This is going to be an awful analogy.) Yes, it's a beautiful, clever item. Very pretty. But...you can shake it. And that's about it. You don't have a big connection with this snowglobe, beyond it just looking nice.

I had, basically, no connection with Benjamin Button, the character, nor the film overall. Eric Roth's script doesn't even attempt to emotionally captivate. This story, a story about love and death and living, could have been an incredibly moving masterpiece. Yet we never have a connection to the characters.

Take, for example, Daisy, played well by Cate Blanchett. You never really get to know her. She gives Benjamin the cold shoulder a number of times and never respects him as she should. Oh, wait, but she's also madly in love with him. And I'm all for Benjamin to be the passive, kind, observer, yet Roth never surrounds Benjamin with good enough characters or story. This script is a mess, as the characters never develop.

The ending is not satisfying enough. A story like this needs a big ending, in a sense, to compliment the big movie proceeding it (See: Forrest Gump). Now, I don't mean there has to be a climatic action sequence, but something that has you leaving the theater a little more moved. The ending in this film was executed poorly and bordered on disturbing.

Wait it comes down to is this: the script was too ambitious. The film itself was a little too ambitious. The screenplay was so caught up in telling this beautifully unique tale and Roth knew it had to be told right. But, during all this, we lose the feeling of it all. An epic failure in terms of emotion.