Every Boring Second of Brad Pitt’s Life Filmed Backwards in Benjamin Button Baloney
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
Reviewed by Morris T. Pevensey, The Movie Critic Who Hates Everything
First of all, I was not inclined to appreciate this exercise in cinematic gonorrhea right from the start. Let me just say that I do NOT appreciate being served my popcorn with the artificial Butter Flavor already added. Nor can I stomach popcorn sans Butter Flavor entirely. As I attempted to explain to the papuliferous mongoloid behind the concessions counter, the option should be available to get your Butter Flavor on the side, in a little dish. You can get your salad dressing on the side at better restaurants (I attempted to explain to him) so why not at the local cinerama? But no, the concept of SERVICE is alien to the I-Pod generation. With the bitter taste of scandal already athwart my lips, I proceeded into the darkened pictatorium.
The less said about the previews the better. Suffice it to say, I will not be reviewing the latest Adam Sandaler film. Not after suffering through his previous fourteen. The worst thing I can say about the previews is that they add several minutes to the running time of the most needlessly lengthy film of all time.
Has anyone ever seen the nine-hour silent-film adaptation of Frank Norris’ Greed? I would gladly sit through that whole thing twice, first with a soundtrack comprised entirely of the amplified screams of aborted fetuses, and then a second time with a musical score by Mariah Carey rather than suffer once more through even the first ten minutes of this seeping sphincter-zit of a film. Now, I do not mean to imply that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a little too long, nor that the pacing is on the slow side. We begin with Benjamin Button’s birth close to the beginning of the twentieth century and finish with his death towards that century’s close. In between, every second of his life is filmed. I do not for a minute mean to suggest that the film feels like watching the entire century unfold in real time. No, half-speed would be more like it.
You see, Ben Butt, (as I would prefer him be called just to save the odd half-second here and there) does not (to give one pointless throwaway scene as an example) simply climb aboard a sailboat and potter about. He sails…and sails…AND SAILS! FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WE GET THAT HE WENT FOR A SAIL!!! DO YOU HAVE TO SHOW ALL FOUR OF HIS ATTEMPTS TO SHIFT THE #)($* JIB??? Ben Butt’s life seems to be comprised of random events, characters who show up, say things and then drop out, and pointless shifts of location. Well, you might say, dear IDIOT of a reader, that that’s life. (Sorry. Do forgive. I heard a fellow viewer try to excuse the films’ sins thus.) That may be life. Goodness knows, I have no idea why I was
perfectly happy in Stonyhaven CT one day and in minimum security prison the next. One’s actions around preschoolers do get misconstrued. BUT I don’t go to the movies to watch life! I go for stories! That make sense! Unlike life! (Damn this Internet registry!)
Ben Butt lives at an old folks home. Because he’s born old, you see, and gets younger as he ages. Brace yourselves, now. Profound Life Lessons ahead! Never mind the fact that such a disease exists, called Progeria, and that its grotesque little victims are routinely sacrificed to various devil gods. No, here it is the setup for thuddingly obvious sappy observations about childhood and age! “I’m not as old as I look” says an obviously old BB. No, his heart is young! Aaaaccckk!
Back to those changes of location and those Life Lessons. Ben Butt gets a job on a tugboat! Cute! Captained by a charmingly alcoholic Irishman. Drunken Irishmen, how cute! Where does this tugboat go? You’ll never guess. Russia! What, you are saying, don’t tugboats normally stay in harbors? Not this one. This one goes to Russia, where Ben Butt has an inexplicable draaaaaaaaaaaaaawn out affair on the wintry streets of Murmansk (really) with Tilda Swinton, (looking distinctly post-chemo as per usual). Someone not involved with this film must have pointed out at the last second pre-release that tugboats don’t cross oceans, because a hastily slapped-on voiceover mentions that the crew got a bigger motor to make the trip! Oh, a bigger motor! Okay! Off to RUSSIA! This wise helpful person might well have gone further and told the filmmakers that tugboats don’t usually go around sinking Nazi submarines either. Alas, such wisdom, if spoked, was not heeded, because later on our doughty tugboat does just that. Take that, ye Nazis!
And the film goes on. And on. Return to America. Colorful pygmy whore-chaser. Old woman who plays piano. Another old woman character does nothing at all interesting besides read and die, but she gets more total screen time than Laurence Olivier did in Hamlet. “She had come to her final resting place.” Aiiiiigh! The last HOUR AND A HALF of this film — long after you are writhing in your seat Vogon-poetry style wishing either the projector or your own tormented heart would just grind to a stop — the entire last HOUR AND A HALF is devoted to Ben Butt’s marriage to a thoroughly boring thwarted ballerina…boring, but at least we get a FIFTEEN MINUTE sequence wherein the events leading up to her getting flattened by a taxi are recounted in excruciating voice-over detail.
Naaaaaooow, foaaaaar the ayunnnnnnd uv thissss revvvvyoooooooo, oops, sorry! I meant to say, for the end of this review, I just want to warn you further that everyone in “Ben Butt” who is not colorfully ethnic speaks in that phony generic Suthu’n Muhlasses drawl that Hollywood seems to think everyone south of New York and east of New Mexico employs. “Ah wuz origjinally borrun in Nuh Awlins” intones Brad Pitt, the most hopelessly un-Cajun human being ever born except maybe for Deng Xiaoping.
Arrrgh! I am just hopping MAD! That was nearly four hours of my life that I could have spent profitably cataloging my vintage stapler collection. And Morris Pevensey is upset! He wants his life BACK! Do you hear me parole review board? Do you hear me Amber’s List? Do you hear me Hollywood?
APOLOGIES AND CORRECTIONS: I, Morris Pevensey, The Movie Critic Who Hates Everything offer, under editorial duress I might add, the following retractions of opinions
offered in previous columns.
In my review of “The Boy In Striped Pyjamas” about the precious tykes in the concentration camp, I did not, contrary to what I reported in my column, jump up and down in the theater and yell “Gas him! Gas the little bastard now before he says anything else cute!” So, I implore you, Loew’s Cinemas, please remove my picture from your lobbies and restore my right to attend your theatres.
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- Madonna Attacks the American Life, Sort Of
- Half Blood Prince is Empire Strikes Back of Potter Movies
oh, great, another hater. who do you think your fooling your the kind of guy who doesn’t even buy popcorn because your so cheap. you just sneak the corn into the theater in an oily paper bag. I’m glad the amber alert people are on to you because the sweater gives you away. you better not show up at twilight or I’m calling the police. BTW, I fell asleep during Ben Butt.
–Almost 50! -everyone’s ‘fave’ silver pool boy -Brad Pitt -has shown all the
originality of a dixie cup in his choice of roles and projects.
—-time’s about up!