The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Critic Reviews

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

A curious case indeed: an extravagantly ambitious movie that's easy to admire but a challenge to love.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

The movie's excruciating length is without dramatic or thematic justification.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date.Read the full review