The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I will admit- I was intrigued by the idea of this movie. It's about a guy that ages backwards! How interesting. But how can they make an entire movie of just that? Let alone one that is almost three hours long? The answer is to fill it with a heavy dose of romance and heartache and the like. In fact, this was more of a chick-flick than anything else. They really did not focus on the oddity of his aging as much as one would think. It simply spans his life from beginning to end (or end to beginning?) and people he meets, the loves that he has, and of course the true love that keeps getting away.

The movie starts out in a hospital where the main love interest Daisy (Cate Blanchett) is old and on her death bed, just before the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She is with her daughter, who is trying to spend as much time as she can with her dying mother (already reeks of chick-flick stuff, right from the start). The old lady asks her daughter to fetch a diary from her luggage, one that she has apparently not read yet. Her daughter begins reading, and then we get a narrated biography of Benjamin Button, in his own words.

The side characters that he meets along the way are a lot more interesting than the main ones I thought. His father did an excellent job, the tugboat captain stole every scene he was in, and there was even a small role of an English lady he has an affair with played by Tilda Swinton. Not to say that character is a scene stealer, I just love Tilda Swinton, and pretty much everything she does. Sadly, that is what I came out of this movie with- an enjoyment of the supporting characters, and another run-of-the-mill bleeding-heart love story that depressed the hell out of me.

All in all: Melancholy Romance and Wrinkles

Lives up to the Pre-Views: I Suppose...

Stars (out of five): 3

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