It's a matter of perspectives

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - that's the movie I'd watched today at Jurong Point with a couple of friends.

My two cents on this movie? Despite the Academy award nominations, I found it lacking, even though I liked the idea behind this story. The visuals were great; the visual transition when Benjamin was old to when he was young was very smoothly done, and the actress for Daisy was wonderful. There was humour in a few scenes that made me laugh, but it wasn't to the extent where it was really terribly funny. The earlier portion of the movie when Benjamin was old was nicely done, especially the part where it was his first time to the brothel and drinking alcohol, as well as his first 'relationship/affair'. After that though... it started going downhill gradually.

The one thing that perturbs me the most is that this movie has a lot of potential to develop its emotional scenes (such as the first time he met Daisy again when she was adult, and when he had to leave her and his child behind so that they could live a normal, unburdened life, or the first time someone he loved/liked left) but it didn't. Although the fact was that the narrative was written in a journal style, I still felt that more emotions could have been put in rather than a monotonous reading. Also, I didn't really like how choppy the scenes were when they changed from the hospital to Benjamin's story, and the little relation from Benjamin to his daughter, Caroline. This reminds me of an old movie, Titanic, where they had used a similar way to play out the emotions and scenes... but compared to Titantic, it remains miles behind. Perhaps it was a lack of strong, moving, background music to facilitate the film or something, but this is one film that I'd probably not watch, but read (if a book was ever available). OH. And the constant bombardment of various to-be sex scenes somewhere in the middle of the movie totally turns me off, given that the rating was around PG, and that number of times it occurred was totally unnecessary?

I have to applaud the cast for their brilliant acting though, and those characters that were particaularly memorable were Captain Mike, Daisy, Queenie, Elizabeth Abbott and of course, Benjamin Button. Unlike Inkheart, this was clearly a movie that was meant to be thought-provoking (or inspiring in a certain sense), but the lack of that tugging in my heart made lessened the impact of those words.