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Benjamin Button

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KvP:
Wrote the screenplay. I've heard that there aren't terribly many resemblances to the original story.

Tom:
The only major similarities are Benjamin's affliction and his later dementia as he unlearns everything. Basically the plot structure and story are completely different, Benjamin does not have the personality of an old man a few hours after birth, his mother doesn't die and the father's resentment is not as great although he does feel a degree of shame and just decides to colour the child's hair than abandon him in his grief. Ben and Daisy's relationship and love story are more complex and elaborate respectively than that of Ben and Hildegarde's in F. Scott Fitzgerald's original short story.

It's a good movie, nothing more nothing less, that could have been so much more if perhaps written by someone else; towards the end I couldn't help but wonder what the film would've been like if Rushdie wrote it. Don't get me wrong, Forest Gump was great but that doesn't mean that it should be re-written with painfully annoying and obvious hummingbird crap and the trite "box of chocolates" character summaries summary.

mbb:
I thought it was a very solid film. If you're looking for a very cathartic movie with phenomenal special effects, then this is a great movie to see. Everything is very predictable...there's nothing to "figure out", which drives people like my boyfriend nuts. I was personally a bit baffled this hadn't been done before, because this just seems like such an obvious premise. I do feel like they could have done a lot more with it, but the film makers definitely accomplished what they were trying to with this film.

Inlander:
So I caved in and went and saw it, against my better judgment.

Now, I'm someone who's more than happy to adjust my preconceptions if something turns out to deserve my respect - but this film was everything I expected it to be: superbly acted, directed, and designed - and with an awful, shitty, abomination of a script. Seriously, fuck Eric Roth. Fuck that Forrest Gump-writing prat and his shitty pseudo-profound aphorisms and his laid-on-with-a-trowel sentimentality that pretends to be deep and meaningful when it's really just paper-thin and fuck his stupid "messages" and his shitty unnecessary cloying cod-philosophical ponderings. That whole cab sequence in Paris? Bullshit! All that tedious and obvious build-up just to say "Shit's random, yo". The whole Hurricane Katrina angle? Completely unnecessary and border-line offensive in the way it desperately tries to anchor his shitty script onto a genuine tragedy like a leech to try and suck some kind of pathos out of it. If I ever see Eric Roth walking down the streets I'm going to kick him in the word-nads so he can never father another shitty, shitty screenplay ever again.

So, first impressions: if you liked Forrest Gump you'll probably like Benjamin Button.

Ikrik:
Took my girlfriend to see it last night, we were joined by two friends.  I wanted to see Gran Torino, I tried for 15 minutes to convince them to see Clint Eastwood but they wanted to see Brad Pitt.  When the hell did Brad Pitt become sexier than Dirty Harry? I knew before I stepped into the theatre that I was probably not going to enjoy this, I don't like Forrest Gump and Brad Pitt really irks me.  Two hours and fourty seven minutes later I stepped out of a movie I loathed.  Whether it was the fact that Button is EXACTLY like Forrest Gump: an unordinary main character, a love interest he can never be with, Captain "Dan" or in this case "Mike."  The fact that there were no ordinary people in the entire movie, every single one taught Button something. The Hummingbirds were stupid....it was an incredibly stupid thing to add in..completely unnecessary...but that's the whole film.  The only parts of the film I enjoyed where the ones when Brad Pitt was old..not decrepid, but the old when he's staying in The Winter Palace.  He really HAD to act and he did a fine job.  As SOON as he wasn't wearing the makeup I went "Oh, it's Brad Pitt being...Brad Pitt."  and the film was ruined for me.  I would slap Eric Roth alone for the way he wrote Queenie.  I know that some people actually might have talked like that but WOW did it irritate me.  What would have really helped the film out for me would be if Button had a different personality, something more so that he wouldn't just be Forrest.  But that's all it was.

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