I don't think he was trying to make it about damn Daisy so much as he was trying to go for a baity, framed flashback structure...which wouldn't really worked for Button, who at that point would have been a mere spermy.

what a snooze fest, this movie is downright boring. Night Owl has the best example of what i think of the film.

Babel levels of stupidity and Pitt/Blanchett were in both.

I consider this film an absolute missed opportunity.

BJs Grade:

C+

grounding a fantasy movie in reality is ok if it works, for this film it did not.

i usually am the best when it comes to films.

i think in some ways, people who are intelligent that watch movies, and people who are not.

I liked the movie a fair amount but had some major script problems with it:

1) Why did the script add the sister plotline? She disappeared 2 seconds upon entering the story, unless that was her at the old folks home at the end, and even if it was, no need for the sister plotline.

2) My largest problem was with Benjamin's choice in leaving his family. It rang utterly false. He was abandoned by his own father and obviously resented it. Furthermore, he could have raised his daughter until she was 18 or so before starting to become a teenager and thus the daughter would have known him, unlike he and his real father. Cate would not have had to raise two people at once and she ended up raising (lowering?) him anyway.

3) The sequence recounting the events leading to Cate's leg breaking. How did Benjamin know that sequence? If it is simple whimsy, fine, but the real point was obviously to show clever editing for the sequence, which hurt the overall film.

B+

I think your all issues listed your grade is to high.

Heh. That's psychology for ya - - happens all the time...

I really hated that scene.

Benjamin did not necessarily feel any resentment. One of the more touching things about the relationship between Benjamin and his father is that Benjamin chooses to forgive instead of feeling bitter and angry for what his father did. He does it in such a poetic way, too, in carrying his father to the pier to watch the sunset before he dies. It is a testament to Benjamin and his personal character, and adds to his 'innocence' of ageing backward.



That was the very point of leaving when he did- so that she didn't remember her real father and have to live with that. It would have been worse, in Benjamin's mind, to stay until she was 18 and then abandon her.

Additionally, it seems to me that signs of reverse ageing were becoming prominent after he left (as displayed by when he comes back to the dance studio to see Daisy), so if he had stayed longer, certainly the daughter would have been noticing and asking questions.

Perhaps it is debatable which move would ultimately have been better as a father, in a hypothetical example, but Benjamin's motivation in the film is clear enough, in my opinion.

Peace,
Mike

The "chaos theory" scene was my favorite in the film.

Yeah that scene was f-ing brilliant. And I tihnk he left his daughter for a more obviou reason. By 18 Benjamin would have looked younger than his daughter, and it pretty obvious that his sickness was a secret from the outside world, with the exception of senile old people, his family, and Cate's character.

A big disappointment for me. Technically masterful, but I could never get emotionally involved in the film. Two aspects that bothered me the most: 1) the constant voiceovers as I'm never a fan of using it excessively to tell or advance or a story; 2) the constant cutting back to the present; Titanic used it nicely, but here it felt unnecessary, was way too frequent, and consistently broke the emotional flow for me. It's not as if any of scenes in the patient's room (and the hurricane reference) add to the story either. The first half is terribly bore; it felt like giving stages of a man's life piece by piece without exactly knowing where the story is going. And suddenly came out of nowhere, we have the 5 minutes on chaos theory that I don't know what to make of. The second half did pick up, especially once Pitt and Blanchett are on screen together full-time. Still, overall quite unsatisfactory.

C

Wow, I didn't know so many people were indifferent to this.

Count me in as greatly disappointed. Alas, I don't have much to add to the discussion, but I'll definitely second that the Katrina sequences were so, so unnecessary. I kept waiting for it make much of a difference in a good way, but it really kept disrupting any flow that the story had. Not that there wasn't much to begin with. I'll also second the complaints about the character of Button in general. There really isn't anything worthy of an epic film here, outside of the fact that he ages backwards. I could see how it would work as a short story, and maybe it would even work as say, a miniseries if you wanted to go the epic route, but if you want to make a theatrical near-three-hour epic, you need to give the character a LOT more to work with.

There really isn't much to love here outside of Blanchett (Who gives the one performance in the film that really stands out) and the production design. It's all just...there. It's so bland and not that whimsical (Like a sotry like this probably should be) that even a sequence that should be as spellbinding as Daisy's accident is sorta bogged down by the fact that it sticks out so much among the more mundane aspects of the film.

Yeah, pretty disappointing.

**/**½

I have to say, I thought more people would like this on KJ. Everyone I know in person who saw it absolutely loved it. Hmm.

Anyway, still my #1 of the year and I doubt it will be topped.

Yeah, definitely agree with Jon on the character of Button. My wife and I kept wondering what the interesting part of the story was besides him aging backward.

Everyone is following my lead!

Same. I think much like Slumdog - you either allow yourself to be immersed in the fantasy or you dont. That will determines whether you love it, like it or dislike it.

ehh...I don't think that's really the issue. Actually, for Button at least, it might be the lack of imagination that's ruined it for many of us.

I have this other fantasy where I allow myself to wish the Benjamin Button screenplay was written well enough for me to remain immersed in it's fantasy for the entire movie...

Now I am thinking maybe the film did not set out to be a grand epic like many of us thought here. We can better reconcile with the film's mediocrity if we think of it as a spoof (or a homage to) on many other good films like Titanic, A Very Long Engagement, Run Lola Run, and many others.

I was disappointed, but not as hugely as some.

I think this film is a lot more enjoyable when you don't know and track that its a best picture frontrunner. It seems that the expectations were so huge for some people on this, and I took friends to this that generally usually see more popcorn films, and they really liked this. I judged it more on 2008 standards, and film quality overall imo has gone down, so its still a great film by today's standards in my opinion.

Agree O. My expectations were sky high for it but i lowered them before going in. I was a little dissapointed at first (early in the film) but then just let it wash over me and enjoyed the film greatly. It also helps that 2008 has been very average.

What about this script is terrible? That the characters weren't chatting away incessantly? That not everything that needed to be said was said (which I promise you was intentional) or that it didn't use every lame hollywood cliche that all the other films do incessantly? Personally I found this script to be fresh, strangely original and quite relieving, every bit in step with the excellent ambitious filled movie it was written for. I will write a full mini-review later, but for the moment I'll say this was one of the best epic romance filled tales I've seen. And since I've been reading so many comparisions between this and Forest Gump and Titanic I will go ahead and say: Benjamin Button was a better movie than either Forest Gump or Titanic! *sits patiently awaiting the inevitable onslaught of people who will call him a young, idiotic, moronic, moron.*

I don't know about film quality being down but I think 2008 has been pretty mediocre for the most part. I compare it to 2007, and while it has better blockbusters (TDK, IM, Wall-e, compared to S3, POTC3, Shrek 3) the indie films and oscar frontrunners have been, for the most part, disappointing. 2007 had so many great films that there were even a ton of oscar snubs (Into the Wild, Gone baby Gone, Charlie Wilson's War, and a bunch of movies that were hyped but I haven't seen yet). This year it seems like the only great movie I've seen that isn't getting oscar buzz is The Fall, and even some of the oscar movies have disappointed me (Slumdog Millionaire).