Good characters, fun storyline, but feels empty.

Rating: 5/10 (25 December 2008)

This movie brings us along the life story of Benjamin Button, who is born as an infant with all the problems of an aged man. The first half of the movie was very fun, he met fun characters, but it all turned downhill a bit once Benjamin was too old to not have a personality anymore. His character seemed completely devoid of anything resembling humanity other than the love the old, dying daisy had for him. Much of this can be accounted for the fact that he did not fit in with anybody throughout his life and all of his relationships were forced to be sporadic and seemingly surreal, which was a nice effect, but beyond this he simply seemed like a hollow person and his emotional depth made him seem inhuman throughout the movie. The screenwriter seemed to have had a dream of seeing the world and wanted to express that adventurousness in his film. Having Benjamin live on a tugboat and visit majestic places, but there just wasn't any meaning behind it, because it seemed more like a training montage but instead of training boxing skills, he was training his character's emotional depth. Regardless, it seemed empty and thus had no effect on me. And I felt the part about him moving to India and living as a peasant there was inappropriate. another point certainly brought up by others already is Benjamin's irresponsibility. obviously we are supposed to have sympathies for Benjamin, but if he is going to have a child with someone when he is not going to be responsible enough to take care of it, that makes him just as bad as his father. Now I can see how the movie might want to show his humanity by showing similarities between him and his father but the fact that Daisy forgave him so easily perplexed me. I wanted to see anger and hatred when he showed up at the ballet class, but instead was treated to casual sex with an awkward separation at the end. Maybe because our society's morals today are slipping the director deemed this to not be completely inappropriate, but I felt otherwise. After feeling cheated by this scene, the movie transitioned into Daisy taking care of Benjamin, and as I was still a bit jaded by the previous scene, my experience with this part of the movie was negatively impacted, to say it lightly, making me leave the theater with mixed feelings toward the film, especially since the entire story was read out of a diary to give Benjamin an aura of "mystique" as a special person of the past, when I felt he did not deserve such recognition.