Enjoy your time and don't worry about the sentiments

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2009)

A lot of what one gets out of a movie has to do with their expectations going in, and I had read a lot about this movie when going into it. Turns out I think critics, especially negative critics like Roger Ebert, are taking this thing a bit too seriously. What we have here is a warm American fantasy, a magical-realism story of aging both inoffensive in its worldview and unpretentious in its approach. Everyone else is either calling it genius or stupid, and I don't know why. I'd rather just enjoy it for what it is.
Lots of names connected to this one, and lots of reading into the movie for them. Here's a recommendation: forget David Fincher. He's a good, visual director, but this movie shares little of his nihilistic sense of humor found in movies like Se7en, Fight Club, and Alien 3. Forget F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose work is much more about the social spectrum and whose original short story was much more satirical in nature. Instead, remember Eric Roth, the screenwriter of Forrest Gump, because that is much more akin to this film--in fact, they share roughly the same structure, with some minor adjustments for a new malady. I'm not complaining, either, because I happen to like Forrest Gump for what it is and this movie had a lot of the same pathos, which made it heartwarming without being trite.
Sure, it's not perfect... besides the anachronism of the backward-aging conceit, there's a few anachronisms in the general layout, and history buffs will probably find a lot to nitpick in it. Whatever. It was a fun movie with only that slight unfortunate tendency to believe that everything that happened before 1950 was tinted yellow and brown (why do filmmakers insist on doing that?!?!). There's been a lot of Oscar murmurings and grumblings about this, but frankly I don't really see it. Brad Pitt, for instance, does a great job as an old guy but as soon as he hits roughly his own age, it's all being Brad Pitt from there on out--you can sense the palpable shift in character and worldview from innocent underaged old-man to knowing-he's-a-sex-bomb Pitt re-enacting Brando's Wild One in small asides. The first half of the film feels very different from the second half, though that's not really a bad thing because a lot of things change throughout the film and the perspective is intentionally one of them.
I thought it was finely crafted in terms of time and motivation of the characters, and I liked the small details such as the grave without writing on it (because he couldn't remember what the name was). The love story is disappointing if you're expecting the usual formula in two star-crossed lovers who somehow get pulled apart and have to find their way back together, because that happens by the time the movie is halfway done; but it's not disappointing if you're expecting a variant of it. Again, remember Forrest Gump.
This movie seems destined to be overrated with subsequent backlash, which is really unfortunate for what it is. It's a compelling tale worthy of escapism and the pathos it generates, that somehow people insist on believing is some Big Art that should win Oscars and Be Immortalized--which basically means that a year from now you'll be hearing all sorts of sass from people who believe that they were too smart for it when it came out, even though they're singing its praises today. I hate it when that happens to a good movie like this one.
--PolarisDiB