Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2-Disc Special Edition) (2008)

USA Today
3 stars out of 4 -- "Set in a visually stunning realm of heightened reality....BUTTON is never dull, and the conclusion is graceful and poignant." 12/26/2008

New York Times
"[A] triumph of technique....Mr. Fincher has added a dimension of delicacy and grace to digital filmmaking." 12/26/2008

Premiere
4 stars out of 4 -- "Pitt and Blanchett are outstanding. Fincher's meticulous attention to detail is unerring..." 12/24/2008

Box Office
4 stars out of 5 -- "Pitt's performance is amazingly unadorned and natural..." 11/25/20008

Entertainment Weekly
"[A]n extravagantly ambitious movie....The movie has been in the works for years, pored over by Fincher like a favorite fairy tale from his childhood." -- Grade: A- 01/01/2009

Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "That the trick never feels tricksy is partly down to Pitt's gentle, sympathetic performance....A film for the ages..." 02/01/2009

Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A]n epic of rare scope and scale....Bold and brilliant..." 02/01/2009

Hollywood Reporter
"[A]n epic tale that contemplates the wonders of life -- of birth and death and, most of all, love....Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date..." 11/24/2008

ReelViews 9 of 10
The premise underlying The Curious Case of Benjamin Button might sound more appropriate for a science fiction tale than a meditative drama. Indeed, the concept of a man aging backward has formed the basis for more than one sci-fi tinged story - from novels to an animated Star Trek episode - but the source material for this film is a 1922 short written by acclaimed novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. The original "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" functions as little more than an inspiration for this movie, which takes the idea and the name and follows a divergent path from the one mapped out by Fitzgerald. David Fincher's film is its own entity and, despite some minor flaws, it is undeniably engrossing and one of the more intriguing and emotionally resonant features of the 2008 holiday season...Although the movie is presented as a series of vignettes, its full impact is not felt until the whole is absorbed. Even the 2005 scenes with Caroline by her mother's bedside feed into what Fincher and Roth are saying about chaos theory, fate, and the sometimes unforgiving jolts imparted by change. In the end, Benjamin's reverse-aging is just a filter that allows us to gain a slightly skewed perception about the process of living and, perhaps by looking through that glass darkly, a better understanding of human nature. Is that too much for a mainstream movie to achieve? Perhaps, and I'm not sure The Curious Case of Benjamin Button takes us as far down that path as it might hope to. But there's no denying the film's power of compulsion and the sense that, when it's all over, it means something. Most viewers will be entertained and moved, and some will find their intellect aroused. The source material may be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has come a long way from where it started 86 years ago. - James Berardinelli
 
Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a splendidly made film based on a profoundly mistaken premise. It tells the story of a man who is old when he is born and an infant when he dies. All those around him, everyone he knows and loves, grow older in the usual way, and he passes them on the way down. As I watched the film, I became consumed by a conviction that this was simply wrong...Let me paraphrase the oldest story I know: In the beginning, there was nothing, and then God said, "Let there be light." Everything comes after the beginning, and we all seem to share this awareness of the direction of time's arrow. There is a famous line by e.e. cummings that might seem to apply to Benjamin Button: and down he forgot as up he grew. But no, it involves the process of forgetting our youth as we grow older...The movie's premise devalues any relationship, makes futile any friendship or romance, and spits, not into the face of destiny, but backward into the maw of time. It even undermines the charm of compound interest. In the film, Benjamin (Brad Pitt) as an older man is enchanted by a younger girl (Cate Blanchett)...I said the film is well-made, and so it is. The actors are the best: Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas, Tilda Swinton. Given the resources and talent here, quite a movie might have resulted. But it's so hard to care about this story. There is no lesson to be learned. No catharsis is possible. In Fitzgerald's version, even Benjamin himself fails to comprehend his fate. He's born as a man with a waist-length beard who can read the encyclopedia, but in childhood, plays with toys and throws temper tantrums, has to be spanked and then disappears into a wordless reverie. "Benjamin" rejects these logical consequences because, I suspect, an audience wouldn't sit still for them...I can't imagine many people wanting to see the movie twice. - Roger Ebert