You'll age in this over long and over hyped movie

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2009)

There's whole genre of movies whose plot line could be summarised as 'a fish out of water' where the central character is out of place ("Crocodile Dundee") or time ("Back To The Future") or body ("Big"). "Benjamin Button" is firmly of this type with its preposterous idea of a baby born as an old man and then becoming younger and younger. The proposition comes from a 1921 short story by F Scott Fitzgerald that, most unusually for a literary work adapted for the screen, can be read much faster (about 10 minutes) than the film can be viewed (an overlong 165 minutes).
The eponymous curiosity is played by Brad Pitt who gives such a languid performance than one suspects that he was as bored as many viewers will be. Really the star of the movie is the ever-excellent Cate Blanchett who is BB's love interest Daisy (actually he manages an awful lot of sex in spite of his physical challenges) and Tilda Swinton and Julia Ormond are fine as well.
The narrative takes nothing from the short story except the name and the concept and screenwriter Eric Roth is clearly attempting a repeat of his success with "Forrest Gump" - another 'fish out of water' - but "BB" has none of the humour and charm of the earlier work. Amazingly the film has been nominated for no less than 13 Academy Awards, but this is an over-hyped affair that only deserves awards for the very clever technical trickery depicting the ageing and reverse ageing processes of its central characters.