Review – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Here we have a picture undone by its own budget. The story required a considerable outlay of cash to get the likes of Brad Pitt to appear and to special-effect him up to play the lead. With all the money two different studios spent on it, the picture comes across as an epic that demands to be taken seriously. However, it’s a lot easier to enjoy if you don’t take it at face value. The story is simple enough: a child is born as an old man and then ages backward. Of course he falls in love, meeting his beloved somewhere in the middle and then ending up as a baby cared for by an old woman. And it goes without saying that along the way he has no end of quirky adventures. In a smaller, more art-house picture this would have been an entertaining, sometimes even genuinely touching, contemplation of aging and human relationships. It’s just too odd a tale for the award-show-candidate blockbuster that marketing necessarily turned it into. Mildly amusing