‘Benjamin Button’ not entertaining

David Wiens

When “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” first came out, I was staying in Phoenix with no car and time to sit down for almost three hours. By the time I got back it had been out for almost a month and I had already heard just about every bit of insight on it I could without ruining the plot.

While I couldn’t argue with the 13 Oscar nominations, several of my friends did. It seemed that with “Benjamin Button,” it wasn’t whether the movie was good, rather if it was entertaining.

It reminded me of high school English class when we had to read a classic novel. Everyone knew it was good, but there was only a slight chance we were going to like it. So when I finally went to go see it I wasn’t looking to see if it lived up to the hype, I was looking to see if this was the kind of movie people were going to follow, or just fall asleep.

My initial reaction was shock and horror, but that was only because I had just sat through 20 minutes of previews to find out that the projectionist hadn’t switched out the reel for “Hotel for Dogs” yet. When “Benjamin Button” finally started playing I was just trying to recalculate what time the movie would be done with all the time lost.

For the sake of brevity I’m not going to detail the entire 167 minutes for you, suffice to say that for once the trailers actually give you a pretty good impression of what this movie is about. The style played pretty heavily on movies like “Big Fish,” “Titanic” and “Forest Gump,” in the way it was told and the lifestyle of the characters. When it came down to it, “Benjamin Button” was a pretty standard big-budget film for awards season.

When it came down to it, yes, I really liked the movie, but that’s probably because I see movies every week. I’m the film equivalent of that kid who brought a book to read after he finished his English assignment.

So if you’re wondering whether to see this movie, I suggest you approach it the same way; if you go to see movies a few times a month, you’ll probably appreciate it. If you see a them a few times a year you’ll probably be bored out of your mind.