Benjamin Button IS NOT Forrest Gump! No matter how much he tries!

Rating: 3/10 (8 February 2009)

There was such a movie once - everybody was talking with southern accent, there were some big events rolling around the plot, and the time was going by so meaningfully that almost every little thing was a starter spark for that big events mentioned above. And that was Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump - very life-cherish story with some nice ideas how to sell so called "village-wisdom" to all the folks "from the city" in a way they couldn't notice. It was done with some bullshit moments, but summing all up - IT WAS ALMOST AN MASTERPIECE.
"Curious Case of Benjamin Button" tries to repeat that simple form of journey to the deep-down-well-known basic truths about life. But you CAN'T be Forrest Gump just like that - to tell a simple story JUST about life you have to manage staying unpretentious, because an idea of telling such story is pretentious in the first place. Zemeckis nearly achieved it in Forrest Gump, so did - in a different way though - Jeunet in Amélie. Sadly to say, Fincher was much much MUCH closer to it in... Se7en (yes!).
In "Benjamin Button" we have everything that SHOULD sum up to that magical mystery tour - Stars in the cast, a story full of coincidences and simple truths, southern accent all over, childly innocent leading character, unnoticed special effects, and epic kick. We even have here a symbol, a logo of the movie (like the feather in Forrest Gump)! But finally we end up with two and half hour masturbation movie for make-up artists, because even though the make-up is truly amazing, there are no REAL feelings beneath it.
Summing up: pretentious, empty, commercial-like, boring way of quoting DESIDERATA. I suggest saving money. And time.