So the snow is back and what better time to have a review by Brotherton, this week he looks at The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - sounds like a crapfest of love romance mystery bullshit, i mean its no TRANSFORMERS IS IT!!! Anyhow here's the review.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The word Curious really does best describe David Fincher's new film. A man who has spent nearly 20 years traumatizing audiences with serial killers, anarchists, conspiracy thrillers and basically anything that will involve guaranteed bloodshed, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button comes across as a film that would have been more suited to someone along the likes of say...Robert Zemeckis.
Of course cynics have recently, and unfairly, compared this film in some ways to Forrest Gump. Although it is written by Gump scribe Eric Roth, and it deals with a man's entire life and the paths he crosses leading to romance, involvements in wars and oddball friends added with a touch of smaltzy sentiment, Benjamin Button is an entity of its own. Based on an avant-garde short story about a man who ages backwards at birth from a shrivelled old man to a healthy young baby at 80 years. The film diverts from the source material considerably by including a childhood romance, deaths, journies across the world and mainly the change in time settings from the 19th to the 20th Century.
Its a formula that sounds just like the perfect outlet for an epic romantic Hollywood film, but given the film's bizarre fantasy premise, it leaves it with several flaws. For one, its primary goal it seems is to endear audiences with the romantic link between Button (Brad Pitt) and Daisy (Cate Blanchett) but seeing as they both venture off frequently into different routes in their lives, meeting, sleeping and falling in love with several other people only to cross each other again, their bond seems utterly false and pretentious, even with the drawback that one them is reverting back into a child.
Its also arduously long. Running at 2hrs 45mins this film can wear on audiences' patience, as it hasn't got much of a bold statement to make. Is this film a life-lesson? A unorthodix romantic fable? Or is it a gunner for cheap sentiment to gain Oscar glory? (This is my only explanation for the unecessary 13 nominations its gained.)
On a techincal note though, its utterly incredible. The combination of make-up and computer-generated effects to make Brad Pitt from a decrepid old man to an untainted teenager is truly remarkable to see. The same could be said for Blanchett's transformation from a 20 year-old youth to a woman dying in her 80's. Made wholly believable not without Fincher's strong direction and the actor's performances to help pull this off.
All in all, a decent but very uneven film. Has a lot to show but little to say from it. At times touching and human, and at other times meaningless and unbalanced. I didn't leave the cinema with a clear feeling of what I just watched. Maybe that's why the title states Benjamin Button's life was merely...curious.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
