I had little knowledge about this movie before its release. Once I found out that it was directed by David Fincher and was based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I got excited. This would also be the third time that Brad Pitt and David Fincher would be working together. I’m not much of a bookworm, but since it was based on the short story, I had enough time to read it before the movie came out. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is a story about a man who was born old and in time grows younger while everyone around him grows older. It’s very interesting because of how his life is the opposite of everyone else.

The long running time didn’t bother me before, but after watching it, I was busy thinking about when this movie was going to really touch on the subject of growing younger like in the short story. The movie version is loosely based on it and the writers decided to shift its focus of the story about Benjamin Button and Daisy (Cate Blanchett), a love story about how two people can find love when one’s growing older while the other younger.

Most of the first half of the movie is about Benjamin meeting new people, but none of them really affected by his weird aging condition. This movie could easily be about a boy who grows older and it would be the same thing. The potential for the plot wasn’t there. I wanted to see scenes like when Benjamin, who looks old, but in reality is 18, wants to go to college, but is turned down because they don’t believe he’s 18. Benjamin gets mad and starts going off about how he is 18 and everyone around him starts to think that he’s crazy. I also didn’t get a chance to see him enlist in war, and later in life was called back again to serve as a higher ranking officer. Benjamin gets ready to serve but the problem is, he looks 16 at this time, and is scolded by a lower ranking officer because he’s too young to serve. Scenes like these were what made the concept of an old man growing younger interesting. I wanted to see the struggles for what it was like for him to grow younger.

The only conflict we have in this movie about his condition is with Daisy, his love interest, growing older while he is growing younger. All the other scenes involving his struggles in the movie didn’t revolve around his condition at all. The first half of the movie was him becoming a semen (the sailor kind) and meeting an older lady every night to talk about things. Boring! And those scenes went on and on without moving the film forward.

So what’s good about the movie? The transformation of Brad Pitt from an old geezer to a young heartthrob was visually appealing. Just seeing young Brad as a teenager would have the younger female audiences swooning for him. You should check out this movie just for the transformation. Might I add that young Cate in the ballerina outfit is pretty hot, especially when she was stretching her legs out for poor old Benjamin.

One of my favorite and light-hearted scenes involves an old man that Benjamin encounters throughout the film who’s struck by lightning 7 times. Every time he tells the story, each scene would be hilarious, like when he got struck while getting the mail or when he was in a car.

This movie had a lot of potential, which is a shame since it decided it wanted to be a love story like the Notebook, which ended in the same way. The ending was pretty touching, but to have to sit through a movie that long with nothing to show for the majority of the movie is pretty disappointing. At least in the movie Jack, he used his aging condition to buy porno magazines.

Grade: C

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