Reel To Reel: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

The curious case of deja vu.

How It Rates: **1/2
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Mild Language, Two Sexually Suggestive Scenes

You've already seen this movie. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button borrows from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but it borrows even more from Forrest Gump. Was screenwriter Eric Roth -- who penned both films -- in a nostalgic mood?

I counted at least a half-dozen references to Forrest Gump, in dialogue, structure or otherwise. Both films draw generously from Southern culture. Both films feature a symbol of life's continuity and unpredictability: in Forrest, it's a feather; in Button, it's a hummingbird. Each film devotes a key scene to the title character learning to walk. Roth even recycles Forrest's most memorable line: "I need to pee."

Perhaps Roth needed more material than he could find in Fitzgerald's narrative, the story of a man who ages backwards. Benjamin (Pitt) is born a shriveled infant to a mother who dies after delivery and a father who abandons him on the steps of a retirement home. A compassionate caregiver named Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) raises the man-boy to little old man until he leaves home as a tugboat crewman for Captain Mike (Jared Harris), Button's answer to Forrest's Lt. Dan.

We hear Button's story as his granddaughter reads his diary to his one true love Daisy (Blanchett, playing the Jenny role from Forrest). Daisy lies dying in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina blows in, a setting likely derived from Pitt's post-K New Orleans activism more than anything else. Benjamin watches as his friends grow older and die as he grows younger. Button may set some record for the number of funeral scenes in one picture, yet Brad Pitt's character walks past death with more of a shrug than a charming perspective like his protoge Forrest.

That's the film's main problem. It does too much wandering through the life of its title character without providing a unique perspective on the human condition from a person living it in reverse. Forrest did its job brilliantly and warmly and with generous dashes of humor. Button is way too heavy and about 15 minutes too long (my Royal Father puts the figure at 30 minutes).

Still, the movie still knows how to pull heartstrings, and it pulls them in the right places. Forrest did too, just a heckuva lot better.