Benji Butt

There's nothing quite like an overly-hyped movie to bring out the critic in all of us. Does it live up to the ads, or is it sure to disappoint? Benjamin Button does both, curiously, and, may I say repeatedly, Brad Pitt is drop-dead gorgeous in the process.

He's a butt-ugly newborn who begins life older than dirt, but ends it, as both Will Shakespeare and the movie point out, in diapers. In the meanwhile, he S-L-O-W-L-Y youthens, while those around him age remarkably fast, much too fast, in my humble opinion. Cate Blanchette, the love interest, looks pretty darned good well into her 50s, until one day, she's totally old and taking care of the newborn 80-something Benjamin. There is one scene toward the end where Pitt looks exactly as he did in Legends of the Fall: gorgeous! Sure, it's the same magic make-up that ages him so drastically, but what a pleasant flashback on a totally beautiful man's first big movie role.

I don't know if Blanchette plays the aged version of her youthful character, but that character is distracting and annoying! First, she looks so unbelievably old that it clashes with the youthful middle-aged woman she ages into during her movie life. Second, her death-bed narration of her life with Benjamin is almost impossible to hear clearly, obscured with her alleged age, her use of pain meds to ease her passage to the next life, and the phoniest Looseanna accent of all the phony Looseanna accents in the movie. Julia Ormand plays her daughter, who is directed to read an old diary of sorts that narrates the story of Benjamin, while a huuricane howls outside and threatens the patients at the hospital. This is how her mother tells her that she is Benjamin's daughter, an unusual time, place, method of truth-telling, even for a movie. You see it coming, but it still seems out of place.

Now, that being said, the movie is incredible as far as the make-up and the locations go. The scenes on the snow-covered tugboat made me shiver; the scene in the brothel seemed all too realistic; the beautiful older hotels and homes reflected a kinder, gentler time. The acting is good, except for the almost "Mammy" portrayal of Benjamin's mother, Queenie, which I found not up to the acting chops of the other actors, including the aged cast inhabiting the rest home and their caretakers.

The one flaw that needs to be rectified is the length: the movie is about 45 minutes too long, and it's a long 45 minutes as the story drags to the inevitable ending. From the tugboat sinking an enemy submarine, an entire scenario that distracts from the central story, to the totally predictable ending, the movie loses its audience. As I walked out, the boisterous group behind me was also discussing the need to re-edit the film to shorten it by at least a half hour. Once we know he's youthening and going to die as a mewling, puking infant, the film needs to end. When he leaves so the people he loves can live out their lives the way nature intends, while he deals with what lies ahead, the movie should end.

Kudos to Pitt for an outstanding job in a role that could have become comedic in less skilled hands. I doubt that this film will do well commercially once word gets out about how it drags itself across the finish line, rather than ending with the same skill it begins, but it is a good rent vid for the coming months.