Still stood time

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
12A, Nationwide

The most curious thing about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is that it could receive 13 Oscar nominations when it is such tedious schmaltz, and not just any tedious schmaltz. This is the worst kind of tedious schmaltz; the kind that doesn’t even have the decency or good manners to go on for only 90 minutes or so. This tedious schmaltz is 165 minutes. This tedious schmaltz should have been taken outside and given a good talking to within the first five minutes. (Just pack it in, will you?) The story, here, is all to do with time not behaving as it’s supposed to and I’m telling you, an hour in you are going to think time has actually stopped. I know I did. The only thing it brings to the party, aside from its tedious, schmaltzy self, is a succession of characters who would be fascinating if they weren’t all such types: the kindly black momma; the drunken Irish sea captain; the sex-starved yet married English woman. This last stereotype always gets me. I am a married English woman and I am not sex-starved. Heck, as it is, my husband and I are even planning on having a twosome one of these days. (I’m nervous, but quite excited, too.)

Adapted from a slender, F. Scott Fitzgerald short story with a screenplay by Eric Roth who, amazingly, also wrote Forrest Gump, and directed by David Fincher who, amazingly, also directed Fight Club and Panic Room, it is about a man who is born old and then ages backwards, gets younger and younger until he becomes as gloriously handsome as the Brad Pitt who plays him and then declines back towards infancy and death.