I’ve been waiting for this moment all year.¬† The film is, so far, getting a good but somewhat tepid response from Pete Travers, who gives it three stars, sends it up as a Best Pic contender but says he was never pulled in emotionally:
More problematic is the relationship between Ben and Daisy. At the moment they meet in age and physical perfection, they’re the most ‚Äî let’s admit it ‚Äî dull. There’s a light in Pitt’s performance when Ben is a freak of nature, but the pretty-boy stuff doesn’t engage him. And Blanchett, bringing romantic urgency and a lithe dancer’s body to her role, can’t really rouse him. For all the Sturm und Drang of the film’s framing device ‚Äî an aged Daisy dying in a hospital bed remembering her life with Ben while Katrina rages outside ‚Äî the romance falls short of rapturous. While watching the movie wind down instead of build, I was reminded of the famous opening declaration in Dickens’ David Copperfield: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” What Button shows is that Ben is ultimately not the hero of his own life or his own movie. He gets inside our head, that’s for sure, but, frustratingly, we never get inside his.
P.S.: The Academy won’t mind a bit.
Well, I guess that isn’t so bad. But when he writes, “the romance falls short of rapturous,” I did a spit take. Yeah, rapturous is exactly what it is. It may not be out of a fairy tale, like Slumdog, but it is a more, shall we say, mature look at love that lasts a lifetime – inexplicably, impossibly, imperfectly.
We can wait out the inevitable New York Times trashing, which should come in a day or two – and I’m going to bet Kenneth Turan at the LA Times will be in Travers’ camp because hey, the film came up short at the LA Film Critics. Just a guess but we like to make guesses around here.
Christy Lemire of the AP was dazzled nonetheless, and writes:
But the special effects are so dazzling, and Pitt’s performance is so gracefully convincing, that you can’t help but be wowed over and over again by “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
Director David Fincher has always proven himself a virtuoso visual stylist ‚Äî to the point of seeming like a shameless showoff at times ‚Äî with films like “Fight Club,” “Panic Room” and “Zodiac.” Here, he’s truly outdone himself: He’s made a grand, old-fashioned epic that takes mind-boggling advantage of the most modern moviemaking technology.
I’m with you, Christy.