What's most curious about the case of Benjamin Button, superstar Brad Pitt's new Christmas movie, is how many critics are slavering and slobbering all over the thing, as if it's the second coming. (Hey, he is actually a Boomer, born in 1963, though very tail-end Boomer.)
Granted, there is a built-in fascination, a morbid curiousity even, about the premise--that a newborn could be born elderly, and age backward, into infancy. It's a poignant, and provocative, alternative, though almost more dreadful than the alternate reality.
But, really, this is a very very very long movie--almost three hours--and just about every minute of it crawls. There is a lot of subtle digital magic here, so seamless that you just accept an elderly-looking newborn, a wheelchair-bound, bald three-year-old, and a middle-aged teenager. But as Benjamin ages in reverse, throwing out his true age every so often, you get caught up in the mathematics of the fantasy, and they don't quite make sense. (Wait, he's 49, but looks like a vital 20-something? And his wife is 43, but looks just as young? Huh?) Also, the framing device, of Button's now-ancient wife waiting to die in a New Orleans hospital bed as Hurricane Katrina looms, is just dopey. As is the reading of Benjamin's diary by his newly-discovered daughter.
This is an interminable fairy tale that occasionally reaches poetic heights of whimsy, but never really soars.
Comments