re: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Benjamin Button was a boring script and about 1.5 hours too long. It was basically a live-life-to-the-fullest story but not delivered in the typical manner. The only thing that kept me interested was the New Orleans setting.

And the Katrina bit was hokey.

What did you think of the storyline in the movie DMIOM? Do you think they should have spent more time in a perticular time period???

Do you think that there should have been another leading female for Benjamin's girl instead of Cate Blanchett??? Didnt know this about her, just looked her up but she is 40, WOW never would have thought that.

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DMIOM


???

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dan mullen is our man

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I thought Benjamin Button verged on horrible. it was extremely boring.. novel idea, but they could have written a better script.

slumdog millionaire was way overrated as well.. it was decent but certainly not best picture material.

btw my pick for best picture last year was The Wrestler.. and Mickey Rourke probably should have won best actor.

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i agree 100% with this post

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Do you think that there should have been another leading female for Benjamin's girl instead of Cate Blanchett???

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Yes. Her accent was NOT a NOLA accent, which pissed me off.

I know its a big internet thing to compare Button to Gump, but I don't think they are thematically alike at all. Yes, both span a long period with a character removed from society, but the thematic difference is stark.

Gump magically makes everything become lollipops and gumdrops, as he bumbles from every major event, and influencing seemingly every major event. Button has an "exciting" life, but he isn't changing the course of world history. He lives his life and affects those in his circle, but he's not this Biblical force. And he is not blissfully unaware like the idiot Gump, he is absolutely concious of how he is doomed to a life of lonlieness due to his differences.

I think it's Pitt's greatest performance. Not flashy, but the way he is a man outside of the world, resigned to run out his clock is tragic yet noble. He is quite literally a world apart.

Dan, here's a link to my thread on this from last summer.

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I watched it last night almost completely cold - I had no idea what it was about or that it was set in NOLA or that Fincher directed it. I personally thought it was brilliant and one of the best in a long time, but I am only giving it 3 out of 4 stars because I can entirely understand some of the complaints other viewers have about the film. Fincher - what can you say? The guy produces stunning visuals. NOLA - the city itself was a character in the movie, and I thought it packed an emotional wallop that I was unprepared for. There were little details like the terrazzo floors in the houses or the little furnaces on the wall that felt like seeing old friends come home (I grew up with my grandparents, so I identified with a lot of the old people stuff also). As far as the accents go - I was happy that they weren't totally invented out of whole cloth like in Catch Me if You Can. It also seemed like the old woman in the hospital was pretty close to dead on. Themes - for me, the dominant theme was not fate, but self-determination. This is why I think it was so superior to Slumdog. Benjamin took what life gave him and ran with it, yet he realized that everything is fleeting - both sorrows and joys. That was the secondary theme for me. When he died in Daisy's arms as a baby towards the end, I thought it was just staggeringly heartbreaking - not because he died, but because she had to have it so in her face that her time of joy with him was gone. She was literally holding the person who had been such a part of her life and that person had no recollection of that whatsoever (despite the fact that she pretended he did.) In the end, I didn't really care at all about the realism or lack thereof of the main plot device. I thought it just did a great job of making you think about life, longevity, living, loving and loss. I also thought it was striking how Benjamin had so internalized his own observations about all things being fleeting that he never really showed huge amounts of emotion.

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The thread goes on to have a pretty good discussion about the Forrest Gump angle (I agree with Baloo - it's a bad comparison).

Great movie that left a permanent mark on me.

LINK

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I know its a big internet thing to compare Button to Gump, but I don't think they are thematically alike at all. Yes, both span a long period with a character removed from society, but the thematic difference is stark.

Gump magically makes everything become lollipops and gumdrops, as he bumbles from every major event, and influencing seemingly every major event. Button has an "exciting" life, but he isn't changing the course of world history. He lives his life and affects those in his circle, but he's not this Biblical force. And he is not blissfully unaware like the idiot Gump, he is absolutely concious of how he is doomed to a life of lonlieness due to his differences.

I think it's Pitt's greatest performance. Not flashy, but the way he is a man outside of the world, resigned to run out his clock is tragic yet noble. He is quite literally a world apart.

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Dunno how I would evaluate the Pitt performance but otherwise I agree.

Gump struck me as bumbling through history as well... not convincingly a moron and I just didn't credit any of the forced relationships in his life... Jenny, his mother, and Forrest are not characters so much as stick figures used to move along a historical plot

The central two characters in BB are at least a little better developed (with the peripheral ones IMO also suffering from a lack of better development)... I cared at least a little bit about the characters in BB and could never muster any empathy for the major characters in Gump because they just didn't feel three dimensional

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Benjamin Button was a crappy movie. It was a horrible idea and an even worse movie.

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Agreed.

I tried to like it but it was just awful.

Other than the one screwed up accent, I really enjoyed it.