I attempted to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button late Friday night, but was so bored I had to turn it off and finish it the next day.  The premise of a man born old and growing younger begs for the attention of a director like Tim Burton.  I was begging for more of a touch of supernatural and whimsy, but all I got from director David Fincher was a long drawn out hospice story spent waiting for not just one, but two people to die.

Brad Pitt got to use his Interview with a Vampire accent again since the story took place in New Orleans.  The current setting of the story takes place at the onset of Hurricane Katrina although it really serves no purpose besides glorifying the setting itself…present day and past.  The lush streets and plantations of the Big Easy definitely give the movie a very visual appeal and made for a nice place and time.  Pitt himself is a bit one dimensional and deals more with the conflict of his heart rather than the main conflict of the strange phenomena that is happening to him.  His “reverse” life becomes a thousand pretty metaphors for life itself causing every scene to almost be over romanticized.  He lives in a home where old people are cared for, so death is constantly coming to visit.  He’s only seven years old but looks like he’s eighty, just like the people around him.

The heart of the story lies with his on and off relationship with Cate Blanchett’s character and how they eventually “meet in the middle” as she matures and he de-matures.  Like real life, so much time is spent getting to this point, and then the rest goes by too quickly.  We never get a glimpse of Benjamin at school or on a playground with his un-peers.  In the beginning, he goes from being a newborn to suddenly being a little feeble old man.  And again at the end, he’s a teen then suddenly a ten year old, then an infant again, but by then the movie is so rich in sadness from the actions of Daisey (Blancett) that you don’t even care.

The magic behind all this is somehow related to a clock that a man made to run backwards and bring everyone’s sons home from war rather than them dying, but this clock story is never tied to Benjamin’s story so you are left to think that somehow that clock was causing all of this to happen to him.  The movie is too predictable right from the start , never exceeding expectations, when the only “life lessons” we see Benjamin learning is love and loss.  If only I could go back in time and have back my two and half hours spent watching this movie!  I don’t regret seeing it; it’s a good movie spent watching it by yourself to contemplate your own life.  But like life, sometimes  doesn’t leave much for hope in the end.