The Curiously (Dull) Case of Benjamin Button

Rating: 4/10 (4 February 2009)

Let's get one thing clear straight of the bat - I love David Fincher as a director. "Fight Club", one of my favourite ever films about male-empowerment, is a post-modern masterpiece. "Seven" - the most effective Serial Killer movie of its generation featured an unhappy ending totally at odds with the typical conventions of narrative cinema, while (more importantly) being a terrifyingly dark and effective thriller. "Zodiac" on the other hand, was a fascinating period-piece study on obsession that subverted the genre to make the investigators as flawed by obsession as the criminal they were hunting. All fascinating films, all compellingly brilliant.
So I was really looking forward to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", the adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's Short Story, starring Ladies favourite Brad Pitt (who had, of course, worked so effectively with Fincher in Fight Club).
Instead, after nearly 3 longish hours of admittedly beautiful cinematography I was curiously... underwhelmed. And the main problem is that Benjamin's life, though going backwards, is not really an interesting enough existence to warrant this amount of screen time. Pitt plays Ben as an observer rather than a protagonist, a watcher rather than a doer, and as a result he never seems to get particularly angry, elated, emotional or upset, even whilst being dumped, finding out his father abandoned him as a child, dodging bullets or watching his friends die (often right in front of him). This makes it hard for the audience to engage with him emotionally, and so the romance between him and his dancer love "Daisy" (Cate Blanchett), which is supposed to be the simmering hot focus of the story, barely reaches a Luke-warm temperature.
It doesn't help that the writer (Eric Roth) has clearly borrowed a large chuck of his "Forrest Gump" screenplay to pen the script. The whole thing is narrated in the Deep South accent which is an unwanted and uncomfortable reminder, while heavy-handed symbolism (like the humming bird) reeks of that annoying dancing leaf. Still at least Forrest had gumption (so to speak) and was involved - sometimes ridiculously so, in the events of his own life, and that of history. Ben just sits on the sidelines, his face a perpetual blank, and whether it's caked in CGI animatronics as a wrinkled old man (pensioner) or sporting a silly grey wig with glasses (middle-aged), or even decked out in quiff and Leather jacket (early 20s) he's just not an interesting enough character to make this film a worthwhile effort. A disappointing shame.