The Curious Case of Benjamin Gump!

Rating: 2/10 (3 November 2009)

Brad Pitt cannot act! I repeat: BRAD PITT CANNOT ACT! No matter the situation in this movie - that the man who has befriended him is his father; that he is to become a father; that his foster mother has died (the body count here puts Jason and Freddy Krueger to shame) - Pitt reacts with a blank stare! I bet when Angelina informed him that she was preggers the first time, and Pitt responded with that stare, she got Lara Croft on his retarded ass!
The clichés would make the folks at Hallmark puke! And the explanation of the "fates" which "conspired" to destroy Daisy's career when, in fact, she had no one to blame but her fool self, was obscene! Even more obscene is the portrayal of African-Americans as a bunch of wide-eyed rubes who scream "Praise Jesus" at the drop of a hat!
"Curious" how Blanchett's face was airbrushed, but Pitt - who has an "I am SO hunky" moment on a motorcycle - doesn't get the airbrush treatment! From "1962" on, he looks exactly the same (complete with that stare)!
Also "curious" is how Benjamin catches The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, but was AWOL when JFK's head was blown off three months earlier! He was also out to lunch during The Great Depression, Germany's assault on Murmansk (while he was IN Murmansk!), The Cold War, The Civil Rights Movement, The Moon Landing, and Vietnam, just to name a few minor events.
Why wasn't Button reported when he snatched Benjamin? How could a black woman get away with raising a white baby in the Jim Crow South? How could the "old" Benjamin bone a whore like an 18 year old on Viagra? How did he know Elizabeth's hubby was a spy? Why does Daisy accept him bailing on her, then accept him showing up years later? Why does he expect her to take care of him? Why does she keep him a secret from their daughter? Why does he talk like a Toaist Nike commercial? How is it that he never registers a blip on anyone's radar? More importantly, how does this hack Eric Roth keep getting work?
If F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to set his story in 21st Century New Orleans, he would have! And if he had wanted to create the idiot characters that populate this tripe, he would have done that, too! That whirring sound you hear is him spinning in his grave!