The Curious Case of Benjamin Button review

Review in a Hurry: So Brad Pitt keeps getting younger, Cate Blanchett keeps getting older. You know, exactly the opposite of what happens in real life.

The Bigger Picture: As curiosities go, it's the pedigree of Benjamin Button that has the most quirk: an F. Scott Fitzgerald oddity about a man born old and aging young, brought to the big screen by David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac). Fincher is a fine director and technician, but whimsy has never been in his bailiwick.

Perhaps he's growing into it. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button—scripted by Eric Roth, who also did Forrest Gump, though thankfully this is much less cloying—follows the whole of the charmed life of Benjamin (Pitt), from his early years in New Orleans (in a nursing home, natch), to his adventuresome coming-of-age, to his star-crossed relationship with childhood sweetheart Daisy (Blanchett).

The story is replete with thoughtful detail and keen observation, and the actors know exactly how much and how little to take seriously in order to keep the fantasy alive.

And while the inevitability of death and the infirmities of both youth and age might not seem a holiday classic in the making, Benjamin Button has one more strange trick up its sleeve: It'll take two and a half hours of your life and still make you feel younger.

The 180—a Second Opinion: Pitt, in some bizarro Dorian Gray inversion, somehow becomes less convincing as a performer as he approaches his real age, which makes the latter half of Benjamin Button a little unbalancing.