The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Just finished watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the movie. Couldn't get over how completely different it was from the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I read in August of this year. I'm a huge Brad Pitt fan, and really, what girl isn't, and the movie looked great in the previews. Also, The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books.

So I had high expectations for both the movie and the book, and was pretty disappointed in each.

I liked how simplistic the short story was - basically this baby is born as an old man, and he eventually dies as a baby with an extremely interesting life in between, sometimes conveniently omiting his age or simply getting by in situations where he clearly appears to be the wrong age. It leaves a lot to the imagination, and Benjamin wasn't a likeable character for me. He and his wife grow apart because he grows young and she grows old, and his wife and child become annoyed with him because he becomes so unlike the old man he should be.

The movie of course has to be much more romantic, with a tragic love story, and Brad Pitt tends to be accepted by everyone without question, and is such a sweet charming character. No one seems concerned about his increasingly young and attractive appearance, and no one really seems annoyed at changing his diapers as he grows into a baby.

I get very frustrated when movies add things that didn't take place in the book. Considering how brief the short story is, and how long the movie is, I knew they'd have to ad-lib a bit, and it just didn't seem necessary. It's one thing to delete scenes because you can't film an 8 hour movie, but creating whole extra subplots irritates me to death. In this movie, for instance, they add this whole backwards ticking clock scenario to explain why Benjamin's life occurred, which just didn't need to be there. And his dad freaks out when he's born and just leaves him on a doorstep. Really? If they'd just had his dad raise him the movie could have been a much less objectionable length. Thank goodness for DVDs so I didn't have to sit through this in the theater.

While the book wasn't that great, it did just hand over the story, leaving the reader to accept it for what it was on faith, which I liked. If you get a chance to read the story, you may as well - it won't take up too much of your life. If it was longer though, I probably wouldn't recommend it.