|
Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
58
Adam Resurrected
64
Appaloosa
69
Ashes of Time Redux
68
August Evening
54
Battle in Seattle
75
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
70
Black Balloon, The
xx
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
51
Breakfast with Scot
xx
Cargo 200
44
Chandni Chowk to China
63
Changeling
64
Che
56
Cherry Blossoms
84
Christmas Tale, A
94
Class, The
38
Dark Streets
58
Defiance
43
Donkey Punch
xx
Dostana
62
Duchess, The
46
Dukes, The
63
Eden
xx
Extreme Movie
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
26
Filth and Wisdom
28
Fireproof
80
Frost/Nixon
43
Gardens of the Night
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
40
Good
54
Good Dick
30
Guitar, The
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
31
Hounddog
21
House of the Sleeping Beauties
50
How About You
70
Hunger
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
40
Igor
79
I've Loved You So Long
64
JCVD
65
Just Another Love Story
29
Lake City
57
Last Chance Harvey
82
Let the Right One In
31
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
17
Lodger, The
xx
Luck by Chance
89
Man on Wire
xx
Medicine for Melancholy
70
Moscow, Belgium
36
My Name Is Bruce
28
Nobel Son
43
Not Easily Broken
64
Nothing But the Truth
79
Of Time and the City
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
75
Pool, The
78
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
xx
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
82
Rachel Getting Married
58
Reader, The
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
53
RocknRolla
65
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
82
Secret of the Grain, The
xx
Shadows
75
Silent Light
86
Slumdog Millionaire
57
Special
82
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
68
Theater of War
68
Timecrimes
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
90
Waltz with Bashir
59
We Are Wizards
81
Wendy and Lucy
71
What Doesn't Kill You
55
What Just Happened?
61
Where God Left His Shoes
40
While She Was Out
81
Wrestler, The
48
Yonkers Joe
94
Class, The
90
Waltz with Bashir
89
Man on Wire
86
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Secret of the Grain, The
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Let the Right One In
82
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
81
Wrestler, The
81
Wendy and Lucy
80
Frost/Nixon
79
Of Time and the City
79
I've Loved You So Long
78
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
75
Pool, The
75
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Silent Light
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
72
I Served the King of England
71
What Doesn't Kill You
70
Black Balloon, The
70
Moscow, Belgium
70
Hunger
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
68
Timecrimes
68
Theater of War
67
Synecdoche, New York
65
Just Another Love Story
65
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
64
Che
64
JCVD
64
Nothing But the Truth
64
Appaloosa
63
Changeling
63
Eden
62
Duchess, The
61
Where God Left His Shoes
59
We Are Wizards
58
Adam Resurrected
58
Reader, The
58
Defiance
57
Special
57
Last Chance Harvey
56
Cherry Blossoms
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Breakfast with Scot
50
How About You
48
Yonkers Joe
46
Dukes, The
44
Chandni Chowk to China
43
Tru Loved
43
Donkey Punch
43
Gardens of the Night
43
Not Easily Broken
40
While She Was Out
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
40
Good
38
Dark Streets
36
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
31
Let Them Chirp Awhile
30
Guitar, The
29
Lake City
28
Nobel Son
28
Fireproof
26
Filth and Wisdom
21
House of the Sleeping Beauties
17
Lodger, The
xx
Dostana
xx
Medicine for Melancholy
xx
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
xx
Cargo 200
xx
Local Color
xx
Shadows
xx
Luck by Chance
xx
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The
Paramount Pictures
 |
|
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for brief war violence, sexual content, language and smoking
Starring
Brad Pitt,
Cate Blanchett,
Taraji P. Henson,
Julia Ormond,
Jason Flemyng,
Elias Koteas,
and
Tilda Swinton
“I was born under unusual circumstances.” And so begins The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: a man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time. We follow his story, set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man’s life can be. Benjamin Button is a grand tale of a not-so-ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time. (Paramount Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Fantasy
|
Mystery
|
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Eric Roth (& screen story)
Robin Swicord (screen story)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
David Fincher
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
Theatrical: December 25, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
159 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date.
100
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
It takes a world-class storyteller and a great yarn to rivet your attention for nearly three hours. This very classy, old-school movie - employing cutting-edge technology that will make your eyes pop - did it for me.
100
Premiere
Jenni Miller
Naturally, Pitt and Blanchett are outstanding. Fincher's meticulous attention to detail is unerring, down to the light fixtures.
100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Brad Pitt's sensitive performance helps make 'Benjamin Button' a timeless masterpiece.
100
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Benjamin Button is all of a visionary piece, and it's a soul-filling vision.
100
Time
Richard Corliss
This film's manifold pleasures come in a series of small packages, with treats inside as tasty as they are unexpected.
91
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
A curious case indeed: an extravagantly ambitious movie that's easy to admire but a challenge to love.
91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
With his usual intelligence, technical virtuosity (the reverse-aging effects are astounding) and storytelling panache, director Fincher gives the film a power and unity that make nearly three hours go by in a flash and pulls its diverse elements together to be something unique for a Hollywood movie -- a true spiritual experience.
90
Newsweek
David Ansen
Lyrical, original, misshapen and deeply felt, this is one flawed beauty of a movie.
88
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
This is a long, impeccably detailed, richly textured movie about a most unusual life, and although it's far from perfect, the sum of it achieves what Fincher set out to do in the first place: Make you blubber like a 6-year-old who just found his pet turtle lying belly-up.
88
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
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.
83
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
It's long, like life, but like life it continually fascinates.
80
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
Above all, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a triumph of technique.
80
Variety
Todd McCarthy
This odd, epic tale of a man who ages backwards is presented in an impeccable classical manner, every detail tended to with fastidious devotion.
80
New York Daily News
Joe Neumaier
Benjamin never questions his fate and never actually gets to enjoy being a kid. At least there's a thoughtful middle part, where the enigmatic Blanchett comes alive and Benjamin seems haunted by life -- someone we recognize, and not just a vessel tossed about by time.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Worth seeing just for the superb prosthetic makeup and seamless computer-generated effects in which Pitt's head is digitally imposed onto older bodies.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
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.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Question: Is life still like a box of chocolates if you're going in reverse? The answer, in the case of the curiously Gumpian The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, is a gooey yes.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Yet it's worth seeing because the sights are truly something. Claudio Miranda's pearly cinematography, Donald Graham Burt's luscious production design, the visual effects supervised by Eric Barba--everything blends, and none of the seams show.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Button has a wide-eyed innocence that almost never palls. It strays far from the mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but often enough it came near to my heart.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Perhaps the movie might have made more sense if the actors could have taken each other's roles: Pitt always seems light and ageless, while Blanchett never seems to have been young.
75
TV Guide
Jason Buchanan
Brimming with intriguing concepts and brilliant visual effects, making it a stimulating treat for both the eyes and the intellect.
70
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
A gravely beautiful drama about the mysteries of aging and death.
63
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
At its most profound, Benjamin Button isn't about anything more important than Pitt's very handsomeness, which, for a surprising stretch of time, is a wonderful subject for study.
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
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.
60
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Attains a level of quiet grace. It's too bad that I can barely remember the movie after only a week. Nothing lasts, indeed.
60
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
It's so almost moving -- a meticulously crafted mechanical bird -- that it nearly feels like the real thing.
50
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Often astonishingly beautiful, but in a way that's the problem: You wonder what visionaries such as Tim Burton or Michel Gondry might have done with the material. As it is, "Benjamin Button" is little more than "Gump" by way of "Dorian Gray." It plays too safe when it should be letting its freak flag fly.
50
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Based flimsily on a minor F. Scott Fitzgerald story, it's an anecdote stretched to would-be epic proportions.
50
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
Benjamin Button is pretty much just "Gump" with better cinematography.
50
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
Realized through old-fashioned camera mastery and newfangled special effects, it’s a stunning technical accomplishment, but one seemingly designed only to broadcast banal sentiments, when it says anything at all.
50
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
As enervating as it is long -- and at 2 hours and 47 minutes it is quite long -- this version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald fantasy short story is a baffling project, an endurance test of a movie that feels like it was made on a dare.
50
Slate
Dana Stevens
Pitt's great in character roles, as a comic grotesque or an unrepentant scoundrel. (See Burn After Reading or, for that matter, Fight Club.) But as a passive, introspective leading man like Benjamin, he's just dull.
40
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
Everything that was sharp in the original text has been rounded and buffed.
40
Village Voice
Scott Foundas
Benjamin Button is to the first half of the 20th century what "Gump" was to the second -- a panorama of the American experience as seen from the perspective of a wide-eyed Candide. Here as there, Roth reduces our complex times to a parade of shockingly straight-faced kitsch.
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
The movie's excruciating length is without dramatic or thematic justification.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 176 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Read more user comments...
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|
