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Critics Consensus: Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an epic fantasy tale with rich storytelling backed by fantastic performances.
Critic Consensus: Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an epic fantasy tale with rich storytelling backed by fantastic performances.
All Critics (246) | Top Critics (45) | Fresh (175) | Rotten (71) | DVD (19)
Remove "curious" from the title and replace it with "twee and pointless", and you're close to it. What a incredible shaggy-puppy of a movie, a cobweb-construction patched together with CGI, prosthetics, gibberish and warm tears.
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.
With a running time of almost three slow-going hours, the movie definitely makes you feel as though you're aging forward.
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.
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.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leaves you colder than it should, and it shouldn't leave you cold at all.
Plodding, facile and fails to connect.
Benjamin Button is certainly interesting visually - but as Forrest's mom will tell you, it's what's inside the box that counts.
I'd like to report that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button represents the end of an era, one of those turning-points when American movies just have to change because they can't get any worse.
Throughout, the film seems to lack the necessary ingredient to engage the audience with more than its superficial beauty.
It could have worked, had it ever snapped to life, but it doesn't. It just goes on and on and on and on and on and on. And on. You may even shake your watch to check it is still going. I know I did.
... I was pleasantly surprised.
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button charts the life of a man who was born old and grows younger as times progresses across the span of the 20th century. Based on a short story by "the" great American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, Benjamin Button is a film that eloquently captures the magic and charm of Hollywood from times long past. It has a warmth, gentle humour and charm that is sorely missing from most of the sentimental slop that is produced these days and is truly stunning to look at. Brad Pitt gives a much softer edged performance than I thought he was capable of and is wonderfully supported by Cate Blanchett who perfectly captures the gradual maturity of age from self absorbed hedonist to rounded and worldly wise matriarch. The "life story" format draws obvious comparison to Forrest Gump, but that film is like Benjamin's inbred, trailer trash hick second cousin; this has a maturity and intelligence that is completely absent from that manipulative, greetings card poem of a movie. The length is an obvious issue but rather than self indulgent, I found it a very brave move on Fincher's part to produce such a ponderous and measured film in this climate obsessed with cheap thrills aimed at people with no attention span. In doing so, he has produced a beautifully crafted, genuinely moving and thought provoking film of the kind I have not seen in a long time.
Super Reviewer
Unnecessarily long. Sure, go ahead and say that I have a short attention span, but I just didn't care about many parts of the film. The idea is interesting and Brad Pitt does a fine job as the lead actor. Although, at times it feels like the film tries too hard to be a work of art. All those long drawn out scenes aren't artistic, they are boring. Not something I would watch again and definitely not Fincher's best work.
A beautiful epic that needs to be watched in one sitting.
great,moving,sweeping,epic with great performances and direction and a story to boot .
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