Benjamin Button...more

I don't believe that, from a director with such control and a star with so much power, one can take this film for its visual effects apart from the story to make the case that it belongs. The history of film is littered with "technical masterpieces" that had little to no story to carry them. If that's the (pun intended) criteria, than this company should go after every Sci-Fi film that came in the wake of 2001: A Space Odyssey, like Silent Running and Logan's Run (and those are the best ones that followed before Star Wars). The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a terrible film. I have no agenda against the filmmakers, nor am I critically qualified to cut into these people because I'm a paying customer; Benjamin Button was just a collision of poor intentions and worse execution. The special effects, I feel, have received too much notice. I was somewhat awed by the young-er-old Button character, but after awhile I felt like I was watching a cinematic bait and switch, in which the special effects are perfected to the point at which the story is irrelevant; this has and will never work. Thank you, Pixar, for making my point. As for Button's inclusion in the Criterion Collection, it surprised me only initially; the filmmakers demanded that this movie be taken seriously as some timeless fable (how many times did we hear "Forrest Gump" when the film came out?), and their target audience, the demographic they aspired to was that which is prone to purchasing a Criterion film now and again, if not owning most of the set. The movie itself really is bad. The actors swam in moribund, self-referential dialog and forced the emotion from every scene, signifying nothing. If you take the "timeline" of the film, than the climax just happens to fall when Brad Pitt is at his most graciously engineered; the most handsome man in the world looking exactly the part, and then moreso, and then moreso.... I nearly feel bad in not liking the picture because it wasn't some fruit-of-the-month horror or car flick. In a way though, this is so much worse: it's a movie that aspires to be seen as art, but not aspiring to be art. It felt made by committee of faux-moral relativists; no one is good or self-aware, but all carry just one more piece to create a moral world for our main character. I felt the worst scene was with Cate Blanchette as a young girl at the fountain, begging for Pitt's attention with these awkward tales of smoking and being with boys and all that; she had no place to take the scene and it's the one time I concur with Pitt in being absolutely dumbfounded. For all the film, I felt like the story was more calculated than the graphics themselves. If the whole tale wasn't bad enough, it ends with that that curtain call of reiterated nonsense from one cast member after another. The whole film was frivolous, vacuous, and worst of all, I didn't find a trace of effort made for the film except when it came to the marketing. The "for your consideration" aspect of this film campaigned from the first blip in Variety and then on; landing a slot in the Criterion catalog was their finest coup yet. For that, I can only laugh and stand in ovation. I'm sure they calculated that reaction, too.