Rough cut presented as finished product

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2008)

I'm really having a difficult time trying to understand what happened here. I do believe there may be a great film somewhere in this mess, so why couldn't Fincher and Co. find it? It seems like they just went ahead and shot the very first draft of the script without much deliberation. I rarely complain about film length, but considering the slow nature of the story, this really was far too long. Uninteresting and unnecessary scenes take up way too much of the running time. Cutting at least a half hour might have drastically improved the flow of things. The entire structure was extremely uneven. Episodic storytelling is a great device, but fails when it all of a sudden feels like a completely different film (and one that you'd rather be watching) The most inspired scene of the movie comes out of nowhere. The events leading up to a traffic accident are picked apart piece by piece in an energetic, detailed analysis of cause and effect, but there's nothing else like it in the entire film. Cate Blanchett is fantastic and Brad Pitt performs a great balancing act considering all the technicalities of the role and scattered story, but the problem with the character of Benjamin Button is that he's really not a very interesting person. His condition takes the place of any real personality and you never really get to know him. The title fits. Curiosity will likely draw a lot of people to see this film, and it is worth seeing, once.