The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

On the day that Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, elderly Daisy Williams nee Fuller is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital. At her side is her adult daughter, Caroline. Daisy asks Caroline to read to her aloud the diary of Daisy’s lifelong friend, Benjamin Button. Benjamin’s diary recounts his entire extraordinary life, the primary unusual aspect of which was his aging backwards, being born an old man who was diagnosed with several aged diseases at birth and thus given little chance of survival, but who does survive and gets younger with time.

Abandoned by his biological father, Thomas Button, after Benjamin’s biological mother died in childbirth, Benjamin was raised by Queenie, a black woman and caregiver at a seniors home. Daisy’s grandmother was a resident at that home, which is where she first met Benjamin. Although separated through the years, Daisy and Benjamin remain in contact throughout their lives, reconnecting in their forties when in age they finally match up. Some of the revelations in Benjamin’s diary are difficult for Caroline to read, especially as it relates to the time past this reconnection between Benjamin and Daisy, when Daisy gets older and Benjamin grows younger into his childhood years.

Billed as this decades Forrest Gump, this film plods along at a slow pace and in your mind a couple of times it actually stops. Watching it in the cinema unlike most reviews gave me a feeling of what a crowd of 50 people laughed at. It was not a lot. In fact, one old guy tells constantly about his life to Ben while he is growing up, and how he got struck by lightning 7 times, each with a comical black and white aged scene of him getting hit. These were the only laughs.

It possibly could lead to an Oscar for Brad Pitt to cement his crown as Hollywood’s golden boy, however it will win for make up and FX. It freaked me out that as Benjamin got younger, the less make up it was needed for him to look his age, that was until he reached early twenties when he looked exactly like he did in 1993’s Kalifornia.

If you enjoyed Big Fish then I am certain that this film will be for you, if however you thought that was toilet, then I would not recommend this.

 

DVD Extras (for 2 disc edition and Blu-ray)

-Commentary by David Fincher

-The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button (13 individual features)

-Easter Egg

-Digital Copy of film

~Review by Alex