God I had such high hopes for this film. It was directed by the same guy who did Se7en and Fight Club, written by the guy who wrote Forrest Gump, and I saw the preview for it this past summer high as a fucking kite. I was really, really looking forward to seeing it.
And then I saw it.
Where to begin, where to begin? Well…let’s see. First off I need to say that the movie wasn’t terrible. It was not the most god-awful piece of shit ever. I didn’t want a refund and I didn’t walk out. I stayed and watched the entire 2 hours and 39 minutes, the whole while thinking, “What the fuck are they trying to say?!”
You can’t blame the director David Fincher for much, if anything. I took a film study (filmography?) course in college once. Got a C. With that in mind, I couldn’t find anything wrong or egregious with the directing. Isn’t that reassuring?
I place blame solely on Eric Roth, the man who wrote this…thing. Here’s the haps: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald a hundred million years ago. It’s a short story about a boy who was born with the body of an old man around 1865 in Baltimore and eventually grows backwards towards infancy. Relationships for Benjamin strain for obvious reasons that I don’t think I need to explain.
OK, so we have this short story. Cool. Then along comes Eric. He decides to modern it up by having the story shift timeline-wise to a more modern setting. In fact, the movie story ends August 29, 2005. Oh and here’s the kicker; since no one in their right mind gives a shit about Baltimore anymore, he decides to have the protagonist hail from the Big Swampy: New Orleans. So…yeah. Just in case you forgot about Hurricane Katrina…here’s Hurricane Katrina.
And then I saw it.
Where to begin, where to begin? Well…let’s see. First off I need to say that the movie wasn’t terrible. It was not the most god-awful piece of shit ever. I didn’t want a refund and I didn’t walk out. I stayed and watched the entire 2 hours and 39 minutes, the whole while thinking, “What the fuck are they trying to say?!”
You can’t blame the director David Fincher for much, if anything. I took a film study (filmography?) course in college once. Got a C. With that in mind, I couldn’t find anything wrong or egregious with the directing. Isn’t that reassuring?
I place blame solely on Eric Roth, the man who wrote this…thing. Here’s the haps: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald a hundred million years ago. It’s a short story about a boy who was born with the body of an old man around 1865 in Baltimore and eventually grows backwards towards infancy. Relationships for Benjamin strain for obvious reasons that I don’t think I need to explain.
OK, so we have this short story. Cool. Then along comes Eric. He decides to modern it up by having the story shift timeline-wise to a more modern setting. In fact, the movie story ends August 29, 2005. Oh and here’s the kicker; since no one in their right mind gives a shit about Baltimore anymore, he decides to have the protagonist hail from the Big Swampy: New Orleans. So…yeah. Just in case you forgot about Hurricane Katrina…here’s Hurricane Katrina.
BUT WHY?!
WHY?! It make’s no fucking sense. It makes no sense! All the other metaphors are so screamingly obvious that the screen should have flashed “MET-A-PHOR! MET-A-PHOR!” every time you saw a hummingbird or that clock that ticks backwards. But there is no reason for Katrina. It’s been a little over 3 years since the disaster. OK, I know it takes a while to write a movie and even longer to film it. So either A) Eric already had this script in the works and decided to tack in the hurricane because he’s a shill or B) he was sitting on his couch, salivating and enthusiastically watching this part of our history unfold, typing up the script in one hand and beating off with the other going “This is fucking brilliant! Why am I such a goddamn genius?!” But whatever. I like a film where everyone dies, either explicitly or implicitly, and I suppose the hurricane tied up all those loose ends.
I like Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette. They do a good job. Brad is good people. No complaints here. And I think Cate is really super hot, plus she reminds me of an ex-girlfriend of mine who I used to have coconut-smashing sex with. They are good actors acting good.
But their characters suck. I know this movie is all about the changes they go through until they die, but why are they all physical? It’s just a bunch of static people with weird shit happening to them. The Benjamin Button you see at the beginning is the same Benjamin Button you see for 99% of the film, excluding the very end (SPOILER: he becomes a kid with dementia and doesn’t remember anything!!!!). Daisy, Ben’s love life, only has two changes from her normal “I have nothing to contribute”self. One is her mini whore phase, which isn’t really a phase and she’s not really a whore. She’s just not dating Ben. Two is when she cries temporarily for realizing she’s getting old and is no longer youthful. That’s 3 minutes out of a very, very, long, tedious film.
The ending was sad. And that’s fine. I like to curl up in a blanket with a tub of Hagen-Daz and have a Big Girl cry-fest moment every now and then. The problem is that the physical age difference between Ben and Daisy didn’t really need to be there in a movie where that difference was the whole fucking point. Dementia sucks. Period. I’m just glad that at the end of this really heavy moment they start talking about Hurricane Katrina again and you’re no longer sad. You’re annoyed. You're like "Oh Jesus not this again. Kill them. Just kill them all. I want to go home now."
WHY?! It make’s no fucking sense. It makes no sense! All the other metaphors are so screamingly obvious that the screen should have flashed “MET-A-PHOR! MET-A-PHOR!” every time you saw a hummingbird or that clock that ticks backwards. But there is no reason for Katrina. It’s been a little over 3 years since the disaster. OK, I know it takes a while to write a movie and even longer to film it. So either A) Eric already had this script in the works and decided to tack in the hurricane because he’s a shill or B) he was sitting on his couch, salivating and enthusiastically watching this part of our history unfold, typing up the script in one hand and beating off with the other going “This is fucking brilliant! Why am I such a goddamn genius?!” But whatever. I like a film where everyone dies, either explicitly or implicitly, and I suppose the hurricane tied up all those loose ends.
I like Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette. They do a good job. Brad is good people. No complaints here. And I think Cate is really super hot, plus she reminds me of an ex-girlfriend of mine who I used to have coconut-smashing sex with. They are good actors acting good.
But their characters suck. I know this movie is all about the changes they go through until they die, but why are they all physical? It’s just a bunch of static people with weird shit happening to them. The Benjamin Button you see at the beginning is the same Benjamin Button you see for 99% of the film, excluding the very end (SPOILER: he becomes a kid with dementia and doesn’t remember anything!!!!). Daisy, Ben’s love life, only has two changes from her normal “I have nothing to contribute”self. One is her mini whore phase, which isn’t really a phase and she’s not really a whore. She’s just not dating Ben. Two is when she cries temporarily for realizing she’s getting old and is no longer youthful. That’s 3 minutes out of a very, very, long, tedious film.
The ending was sad. And that’s fine. I like to curl up in a blanket with a tub of Hagen-Daz and have a Big Girl cry-fest moment every now and then. The problem is that the physical age difference between Ben and Daisy didn’t really need to be there in a movie where that difference was the whole fucking point. Dementia sucks. Period. I’m just glad that at the end of this really heavy moment they start talking about Hurricane Katrina again and you’re no longer sad. You’re annoyed. You're like "Oh Jesus not this again. Kill them. Just kill them all. I want to go home now."
Some cool shit does happen. I like the guy who gets struck by lightning 7 times. And I learned that a tug boat could take down a Nazi U-boat. So...between this and Cate Blanchette I suppose I'd watch this film again (alright I'm just going to get this out of my system. Redheads are hot. They are fucking hot as hell but there is such a fine line between a Satan's dark angel of lust and your run of the mill ugly ginger mongoloid, covered in freckles and their hair, honestly, is orange. And all redheads are insane. They...are...insane. Period.).
This is a good Netflix movie, but don’t go see it in theatres. It’s going to win an academy award.
I give The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 4/10 corgis.
Oh yeah. For those who didn’t want to know the ending...whoops.
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