The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

All Critics (231) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (176) | Rotten (66) | DVD (24)

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 film quickly outgrows any sense of gimmickry and matures into a one-of-a-kind meditation on mortality, time's inexorable passage and the fleeting sweetness of love.

December 29, 2008 Full Review | Comment (1)

Joe Morgenstern

Wall Street Journal

Top Critic

Benjamin Button is little more than Gump by way of Dorian Gray. It plays too safe when it should be letting its freak flag fly.

December 29, 2008 Full Review | Comments (5)

Ann Hornaday

Washington Post

Top Critic

One of the best half-movies of the year.

August 16, 2011 Full Review | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

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 | Comment

Edward Havens

FilmJerk.com

Blu-ray disc review.

May 6, 2009 Comment

Staci Layne Wilson

Buzzine Magazine

• 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 (10 days ago)
• 1. Benjamin Button: For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.
  – Submitted by Maria Y (10 days ago)
• 1. Benjamin Button: It's a funny thing about comin' home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You'll realize what's changed is you.
  – Submitted by Maria Y (10 days ago)
• 1. Benjamin Button: I was thinking how nothing lasts, and what a shame that is.
  2. Daisy: Some things last.
  – Submitted by Maria Y (10 days ago)
• 1. Daisy: Would you still love me if I were old and saggy?
  2. Benjamin Button: Would you still love ME if I were young and had acne? When I'm afraid of what's under the stairs? Or if I end up wetting the bed?
  – Submitted by Maria Y (10 days ago)