Full Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I have been excited to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for weeks. The ads looked gorgeous, it has actors in it whom I can happily ogle watch for hours upon hours, I am generally a sucker for costume or period dramas (especially of the early 1900s sort), and yes... I had high hopes.

Honestly, I cannot remember the last time I was this disappointed in what could have been a very fine film. To put it simply: it is very capable, but it is entirely pointless. The acting is great, the set design is sumptuous, and overall it looks very good. Somewhere in the 17th hour of runtime, however, you realize that Benjamin is merely a flaccid foil for the much-more-interesting people around him, that Daisy is an annoying bitch, that your bum has gone numb, that your brain is going numb from the inane voice-overs (all done in a maddeningly slooooooooow monotone), and that even after all this time, all this exposition, you still know absolutely nothing about any of these characters. Nor are you all that interested in changing this fact.

Generally, the movie gives you no reason to care... and you know what? I followed its advice, and didn’t. For the last 45 minutes, maybe, it does finally hit its stride and for a bit actually offers you some kind of emotional incentive to pay attention... but it’s a pretty long slog to get there. And by that point I was almost too annoyed to care. The set-up (guy ages backwards) is a positively FASCINATING opportunity for a psychological case-study -- or at least some mention of how this defect affects one's conception of the world -- but no. That would be far too much depth.

That being said, Benjamin Button is very, very pretty to watch. It’s slow as hell and almost entirely brainless, but man, they must have spent a lot of money on its production. Even the smallest details are exquisite and well-composed. Whole tableaux are art-installations through which the camera wends, and the director (David Fincher, light years away from the tight, effective film-making of Seven) clearly has fun with emulating an old-film “look” and the nostalgic nuances sepia tone can bring. Too bad, then, that the people and actions that fill up this beautiful space are so vacant.

If you are in the mood for gorgeous, easy-to-ignore background noise, Benjamin Button works quite well (file it next to Girl With the Pearl Earring, Snow Falling on Cedars and The New World in that category). It’s just not that compelling as a piece of cinema worth focusing on.

This gets my award for “Biggest Frickin’ Disappointment Of The Year”. Good job!

5/10

PS: For Pitt oglers, the scenes where the special effects manage to anti-age him back to his A River Runs Through It young gorgeousness are quite a treat. To refresh your memory. Gosh, that man was pretty.

Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 7/10

Usually, I like to wait a day or three between seeing a movie and actually hammering out my complete thoughts on it -- this technique gives me a chance to mull it over, figure out exactly why I liked it or why I didn’t, and generally get a bit of distance on the experience that was the specified movie. Unfortunately, my super-scientific incubation period has failed. I swear I was paying attention to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when I saw it, but in the intervening week it has in large part evanesced from my memory. And so, dear readers, you are stuck with my dawdling upon the memorable bits, as unconnected as they may be.

For the most part, though, what more do you need in an Indiana Jones movie other than “blah blah mythology blah blah awesome history professor with a whip blah blah action blah blah Cold War villains blah blah wisecracks blah blah finis”? I’m going play devil’s advocate on this one and vote for a cohesive story. All of the important pieces are there, in fine form -- myths and legends (this time taking our hero to the jungles of South America), the Soviets, lots of snark, and of course, the inimitable Indy -- there are just a lot of extraneous bits. Spielberg doesn’t just toss in the proverbial kitchen sink for kicks: he launches a veritable armada of them at the audience, for no discernible reason except that he can. Unfortunately, what this means is that for every important or interesting plot point or bit of character development, we get 20 minutes of “exciting”, glitzy, or just completely nonsensical fluff.

One fight scene, in particular, would have been better suited for a Saturday morning cartoon than to an action movie ostensibly aimed at adults, or at least the over-8 set. It goes from “cool idea” to “bye-bye anything approaching realism” to “gosh, what are they going to do next? CG in some rubbery legs to really heighten the stretchy effect?” to “bored now” pretty quickly, but the fight continues for about 5 minutes past that. Luckily, after this over-done wallow in juvenile action, Indiana bounces back and returns to a much more palatable form.

Really, for all the snazzy special effects and well-choreographed action, it’s not the reason we’re paying to see this specific action movie. It’s Indiana Jones, and dammit, I want Indiana! Luckily, the movie delivers -- hat and whip intact. Harrison Ford is older, the character himself is older, and it’s nice to see that the script ages both appropriately, both on the timeline (it’s now the 1950s and we’ve traded Russians for Nazis) and in the way the character reacts to the world around him. Make no mistake -- he’s still bad-ass. He’s just a little arthritic, which, interestingly, is not a bad thing.

The rest of the cast, as well, lives up to the campiness of their surroundings, with Cate Blanchett especialloy sinking her teeth into her “wubble-Us” as a Soviet commander interested in psychic warfare and totally rocking a pseudo-dominatrix look, supremely bad haircut excepted. Also, much to my dear fellow reviewer’s delight, Shia LeBoeuf really is in this movie and almost out-Brandos Brando, circa The Wild One (perhaps this is more for my enjoyment than Paul’s -- his is a more intellectual satisfaction at once again having The Truth proven) [PCW: He's in EVERYTHING. I swear I saw him wandering around in the background of The Constant Gardener]. And Karen Allen pops up again, aging gracefully and oh, so sassily as the love of Indiana’s life. I’m glad they brought her back. She definitely adds spice to the movie. They make a good pair, and I’m endlessly glad they didn’t throw in some hot young number for Indy to lust after -- Marion, middle-aged as she may be, is infinitely better than any nymphet.

I’m still a little bit thrown by the denouement, involving aliens with crystal skeletons (their rib cages are gorgeous! I’m serious.) and what I think was a quadruple-backstabbing, but this is an Indiana Jones movie. It all made some kind of mushy sense in the end.

Is it realistic? Hell no. Is it fun? Oh, yea. Will you remember 85% of the plot twists a day after you walk out of the theatre? Probably not. Will you go home and end up watching the original trilogy and hearken back to the glory days? I hope so.