"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" starts with a clock that winds backwards.
The scene works as a metaphor for the life of Benjamin, who is born with an 80-year-old body and gets younger as he ages, and also for the way time moves as you watch the movie.
Damn thing never seems to end.
Nearly three hours long, the movie is a polished, heartstrings-yanking mammoth that buckles under its weight as it slogs along. You start rooting for Benjamin to look younger and younger as he creeps toward death.
Brad Pitt is the topliner, but he hardly gets the chance to strut his stuff. Most of the time he's restricted to digitally enhanced and edited face acting, as his aging, makeup-caked noggin is attached to crumpled pint-size bodies.
The reverse-aging motif is meant to explore mortality and the perception of age in a deeper way by juxtaposing advanced appearance with psychological immaturity. But it mostly just leaves you with the realization that being born old and dying young would stink.
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As a child he can't frolic with friends because his joints are stiff and his back is stooped. In his 20s he's as lined and gray as a man in his 50s.
Benjamin's plight also complicates his one true love, Daisy (Cate Blanchett) — a girl he meets in his childhood — except for one golden period where they appear to be about the same age.
Screenwriter Eric Roth, who won an Oscar for "Forrest Gump," adapted the script from an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story.
He sticks so closely to his "Gump" template you can practically taste the peas and carrots: Nearly every significant "Gump" character has a "Button" cohort, especially the supportive, aphorism-spewing mother (played in "Button" by Taraji P. Henson).
Like Forrest, Benjamin talks in a Southern Accent and attains romance through stalking an indifferent childhood friend. And the phrase "Life is like a box of chocolates" is subbed out for the generic "You never know what's coming for ya."
If only the saying were true of the film, which is entirely too predictable. The rote narrative is a first in the otherwise stellar career of the otherwise exciting director David Fincher ("Fight Club," "Zodiac").
The movie seems to exist mainly to show off spectacular special effects.
But as stunning as the makeup and computer effects are, Pitt is at his charming best in the scenes without physical alteration.
For most of the film he seems as though he's trapped. Just like his character. And just like the audience.
Review
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
**
• Rated: PG-13 for brief war violence, sexual content, language and smoking.
• Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Taraji P. Henson.
• Director: David Fincher.
• Family call: Generally fine for kids who are able to sit still for nearly three hours.
• Running time: 167 minutes.
