THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

Drama

F.Y.I.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 1896 – December 1940) was an American writer of novels and short stories whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age (a term he coined himself). He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. The Great Gatsby is probably his best known novel. He wrote dozens of short stories including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which was first published in Colliers Magazine in 1921.

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Cate Blanchette: 80-year-old Daisy
Julia Ormond: her 40-something-year-old daughter Caroline
Taraji Henson: Queenie, owner of a nursing home
Mahershalalhashbaz Ali: Queenie’s best friend Tizzy
Spencer Daniels: 12-year-old Benjamin Button
Madisen Beaty: 10-year-old Daisy
Brad Pitt: Benjamin from the age of 16 onwards
Jared Harris: tugboat Captain Mike
Tilda Swinton: Elizabeth Abbott, wife of a British spy
Jason Flemyng: wealthy industrialist Thomas Button

REVIEW
“Once upon a time…”
That would have been a better opening to this fairy tale about a newborn child who looks like a crippled old man and because of reverse-aging will look younger as he gets older.
Using flashbacks from the reading of a journal written by Benjamin, a series of vignettes chronologically follows him as he grows up from the end of World War I to present day. As each one is fairly short there is no boredom factor but because it takes 2 hours and 47 minutes to cover all those years, some may feel the film is too long. I did not even though I am not a big fan of any movie that goes beyond two hours. The movie is very entertaining, even engrossing and has some special effects that are worth the price of admission alone. The acting is uniformly great (especially by Pitt) and the sound track is a joy to hear.

CLASSIFICATION
for brief war violence, sexual content, language and smoking.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
The process of an actor re-recording lines they spoke during filming that must be replaced to improve audio quality or reflect dialog changes is called automated dialogue replacement (ADR). If done well this post-production step cannot be detected. Such is not the case when Benjamin is sitting on a little sofa in the living room relating one of his stories.

P.S.
It is interesting to note that smoking has become one of the factors considered by the MPAA board when assigning ratings to a movie.