elephant in the room

Rating: 6/10 (21 October 2012)

a potentially good movie; nice quiet performance by pitt, carried by getting more from blanchette, misused and underused ormond, nicely shot, seems quite promising- except for the elephant that keeps charging into the room- the reverse age thing; you have to buy, or overlook, the premise of reverse aging, but then they keep hitting you with it in the wrong ways- like he starts as a 4'8" cripple who reverse ages to a 6-foot paragon; old people do sometimes shrink an inch or two, but not a foot or two; there are too many times when pitt is supposedly 10 years younger, but shown with a more furrowed brow, and blanchette is 20 years older and not a wrinkle; it's a though the continuity girl lost it- the one on the set who is supposed to see that when the cigarette has burned down to the filter, the close-up takes don't show it freshly lit; also suffers from been there done that, a la dorian gray and others; and the conundrum of a baby dying by becoming younger? as though unborn is dying? doesn't quite work metaphysically; so as you get hooked in, an usual love story, through the ages, even backwards, the movie keeps hitting you with implausible and impossible conditions instead of brushing them aside and keeping the story and your attention on track