Saturday, January 31, 2009

Curiuos life?--not so much

I feel compelled to take a break from the Mice shenanigans to put in my two cents on the movie: The curious life of Benjamin Button. I don't get out to see many movies, so, it is dissapointing when one falls very short of its hype. I have not read any reviews on it, but I am sure that there are plenty of people with the same observations as I.

First of all, anyone who has see it, will notice obvious comparisons to Forest Gump. The oft repeated line: "You never know what's comin' for ya." Is strikingly similar to Gump's: "Life is like a box of Chocolates-you never know what you're gonna get." Is it not? In fact the whole movie is kind of like a recycled Forest Gump. Only this time, its a strange child man--man child dude instead of a slow, child-man who falls ass backward into everything.


A lot of the movie didn't make a lot of sense either. Why is Benjamin born a baby who is old, and becomes an old looking child, and then at the end of his life he becomes a baby who is actually a normal looking baby. To be consistent shouldn't he have died a full grown man who looks like a baby? C'mon. Did they go over budget on the freaky special effects?


Then, later in the movie, after Benjamin has a child with his love, and they are happy--he decides the best thing to do is to abandon them. This is for their own good. What the hell? His reasoning it that he will be too young to raise the kid, and his true love will be saddled with two kids. But, in reality, Benjamin, who at the time is the same age as her, (around 40) will have many years to raise this kid. In fact, he has over 20 years as an adult while she grows up. Why couldn't he raise her? In another inexplicable scene, the now, adult daughter is visiting with her old and dying mother in the hospital. She finds a picture of the mother in her dancing attire. And, says this: "Mom, you never talked about your dancing." Her mother owned a dancing studio, for God's sake. I found myself getting really anrgy at this point in the movie, as I had already invested a couple hours.
Another problem, that only serves to make an already too long, film drag, even more, is that there were too many extranious characters. Sure, they were supposed to be colorfull, but, guess what? They weren't. And they didn't really have much significance to anything. The woman at the hotel--the guy who came and took him out when he lived at the retirement home. The story at the beginning of the guy with the clock. Do they have to beat us over the head with symbolism? What was that all about? Who cares?


I kept waiting for a pay off. I kept waiting to feel something--but, I never did. There were plenty of opportunities for the makers of this film to touch the audience, but they were lost in an overblown score of heart tugging music and a parade of lifeless characters. What left me most curious about Benjamin button, is why I wasted 7 bucks to see it.
There-I feel better now. Not that I couldn't have gone on as long as the actuall movie about all that was wrong with it. But, will restrain myself. This whole blog entree has made want popcorn.


By the way all pictures on this blog, unless photos , are my artwork.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, Marie:

How about reviewing, "Iron Man" (2008)? I watched this movie, on Blu-ray, a few weeks ago.

While it's action-packed and loaded with dazzling special effects, "Iron Man" contains intelligent dialogue, a good plot and reasonable characterizations, also.

Oh, well...just a suggestion, if you want to become more of a film critic!

Anonymous said...

I have not seen the film, and I am glad I got a review here...I had seen the commercial for the film and pondered the story about the man who reverses his age in life! may be there is a profound message, that they lost on the way to the make up trailor and they figured no one will notice the lack of, since its Brad Pitt.OR, maybe Pitt needed money before the stimulat checks went out. Times are hard when, especially, you have kids.