The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

All Critics (233) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (178) | Rotten (66) | DVD (24)

An epic, melancholic romance that employs a multi-generational cast and groundbreaking visual effects. It's a testament to Fincher's skill as a storyteller that the film actually works, albeit sporadically.

February 5, 2009 Full Review

Tom Huddlestone

Time Out

Top Critic

With a running time of almost three slow-going hours, the movie definitely makes you feel as though you're aging forward.

January 2, 2009 Full Review | Comments (4)

Peter Rainer

Christian Science Monitor

Top Critic

Mostly, the film is an orgy of excess, in which Fincher indulges his passion for luxuriant image-making, with little regard for whether the story merits (or can withstand) such grandiose treatment.

December 30, 2008 Full Review | Comments (2)

Scott Foundas

Village Voice

Top Critic

There's leisure to the storytelling, a splendor that captures the movie's celebratory but also melancholy ideas about our time on this mortal coil.

December 30, 2008 Full Review | Comment (1)

Lisa Kennedy

Denver Post

Top Critic

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leaves you colder than it should, and it shouldn't leave you cold at all.

December 29, 2008 Full Review | Comments (13)

Kenneth Turan

Los Angeles Times

Top Critic

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is that rare thing: a truly magical movie.

December 29, 2008 Full Review

Moira MacDonald

Seattle Times

Top Critic

One of the best half-movies of the year.

August 16, 2011 Full Review

Kelly Vance

East Bay Express

Every decade gets its Forrest Gump. David Fincher's version of a little known (and monumentally depressing) F. Scott Fitzgerald story is this one's. That's either a damning condemnation or just what the doctor ordered.

March 18, 2011 Full Review

Joshua Starnes

ComingSoon.net

David Fincher's epic doesn't wallow in nihilistic obsessions, but preached no comforting homily about life's rich pageant either. Life is feel-good in spurts - a series of oddly interconnected, occasionally elating moments that accumulate before death.

September 25, 2010 Full Review

Nick Rogers

Suite101.com

It's not an inherently flawed premise, but it is in writer Roth's saccharine-stained hands. It's frustrating, because it's easy to see how it could have been so much better.

June 12, 2010 Full Review

Ian Buckwalter

DCist

La premisa es un trozo puro de fantasía y una reflexión sobre el sentido de nuestras vidas%u2026 y creánme, dicha reflexión es tan sólo antesala de las muchas que contiene este filme.

March 11, 2010 Full Review

Luis Martinez

Cinenganos

Sure, I cried at the end. I'm not a robot. But I cry at cat food commercials if they punch the right button. I just can't get on the Button train. I wish I could have obeyed my instincts and stayed home.

December 15, 2009 Full Review | Comments (3)

Karina Montgomery

Cinerina

Brad Pitt spends a lifetime aging backward in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and there are points in the movie where your tired hindquarters feel as if they've been along for every minute of his strange journey.

September 18, 2009 Full Review

Matt Soergel

Florida Times-Union

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the total package, a deftly assembled fairy tale that unspools like a pleasant dream.

September 4, 2009 Full Review

Mike Scott

Times-Picayune

Who knew that F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story would end up on the screen as a three-hour Botox ad?

August 26, 2009 Full Review | Comments (6)

Fernando F. Croce

CinePassion

Between the visuals and the Pitt factor, this is a movie your girlfriend will dig, but there's enough crazy fantasy stuff going on that I'd never call it a "chick flick."

August 13, 2009 Full Review | Comments (2)

Jordan Hoffman

UGO

ostvarenje koje bi se komotno moglo nazvati Forrest Gump 2.0

July 15, 2009 Full Review

Dragan Antulov

Index.hr

a slow starter, and it never really speeds up into a thrilling film, save for one scene of war on the ocean. However, it's not meant to be fast-paced or riveted with action.

June 14, 2009 Full Review

Kevin Carr

7M Pictures

Yes, Button can be glorious, but the Hollywood glamour drowns the soul that it so needs. Plus, there is the insistent reminder that we will all lose our looks and die.

June 10, 2009 Full Review | Comments (3)

Clay Cane

BET.com

With fine acting all around, and Fincher's typically meticulous filmmaking engagingly, if coldly, transportive above and beyond Roth's mediocre script, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button bears examining. [Blu-ray]

May 17, 2009 Full Review

Peter Canavese

Groucho Reviews

... A beautiful, heartbreaking film ... packed with tender, loving performances and some of the most astounding visual effects we have ever seen.

May 15, 2009 Full Review

Greg Maki

Star-Democrat (Easton, MD)

an outsized romantic epic built on a potentially flimsy bit of fantastical whimsy that instead becomes an affecting allegory for the fleeting joys of life

May 11, 2009 Full Review

James Kendrick

Q Network Film Desk

The best movie of 2008 makes an early claim for the best DVD of 2009.

May 6, 2009 Full Review

Edward Havens

FilmJerk.com

• 1. Captain Mike: You've got to do what your meant to do.
  – Submitted by Adam P (38 days ago)
• 1. Benjamin Button: Some people, were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people, dance.
  – Submitted by Alexander C (7 months ago)
• 1. Benjamin Button: Things were becoming different for me. My hair had very little gray and grew like weeds. My sense of smell was keener, my hearing more acute. I could walk further and faster; while everybody else was aging, I was gettin' younger... all alone!
  – Submitted by Jeremy C (9 months ago)
• 1. Benjamin Button: There's something peaceful, even comforting knowing that the people you love are asleep in their beds where nothing can harm them.
  – Submitted by Adeline S (11 months ago)
• 1. Benjamin Button: Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.
  – Submitted by Tiago M (11 months ago)
• 1. Benjamin Button: You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.
  – Submitted by Maria Y (12 months ago)

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