Movie Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Poster

My Rating:

This afternoon I saw the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at UA Cinema, Time Square, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Another one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

The plot of the movie is fairly typical but with a special twist. It is about a man, Benjamin Button (played by Brad Pitt), who was born with an old man’s body and died as a baby.

The special effects and makeup were quite amazing. Although one would not expect special effects to play an important role for a movie like this. It enabled the team to transform Pitt, a 46 years old in real life, into a young teenager. The other side of the transformation was to make Pitt into a convincing 70 years old, which was the creativity of makeup artist, Greg Cannom.

Cannom’s artisan included the transformation of Pitt’s body into an old man’s, along with sagging chest and flabby stomach. This efforts earned him an Oscar nomination, “Achievement in Makeup”.

For some reasons this movie reminded me of Tim Burton‘s Big Fish (2003). I guess it was the cinematography and the fantasy nature of the plot. There is a questionable yet believable feel for the events that transpire throughout the movie.

Pitt delivered his usual great performance, convincing the audience he was indeed the age the character was going through. Enough so that it earned him an Oscar nomination for “Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role”. One of his supporting actresses, Taraji P. Henson also had a great performance, earning an Oscar nomination herself for “Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role”. In total the movie racked up 13 nominations at the 81st Oscars to be held on February 22nd.

This is definitely a movie for fans of Pitt, but anyone into fantasy and stories of Eric Roth should not miss either.