aims for greatness, but ultimately this is a slight tale blown up

Rating: 6/10 (20 July 2011)

Benjamin Button is a moderately interesting idea for a movie with a few very good scenes and a lot of forgettable ones. The central idea of a man whose body becomes younger as he ages is presented pretty well, and Pitt is quite good in the title role. The movie is occasionally effecting.
But there's really not much to this. Take away the central gimmick, and this is just a story about a guy living a fairly ordinary life, growing up, falling in love, getting old, losing his mind. The central gimmick is often irrelevant to the story.
Clearly the filmmakers think they have something truly profound; why else would they make it so damn long? But while the odd aging of Button offers a slightly different way to think about growing old, it's not *that* different.
This movie reminded me of Forest Gump (which turned out to share the same screenwriter), in that it was just sort of a guy living his life, and in that I found it dull. I liked Benjamin Button better than Gump (in spite of all its admirers I found it quite dull) but I still just never felt there was much to it. While it's perfectly watchable, I wish I'd spent that 2 hours and 45 minutes on a better film.