The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: December 25, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
10
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date. Read full review
100
New York PostLou Lumenick
It takes a world-class storyteller and a great yarn to rivet your attention for nearly three hours. This very classy, old-school movie - employing cutting-edge technology that will make your eyes pop - did it for me. Read full review
100
PremiereJenni Miller
Naturally, Pitt and Blanchett are outstanding. Fincher's meticulous attention to detail is unerring, down to the light fixtures. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Brad Pitt's sensitive performance helps make 'Benjamin Button' a timeless masterpiece. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Benjamin Button is all of a visionary piece, and it's a soul-filling vision. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Corliss
This film's manifold pleasures come in a series of small packages, with treats inside as tasty as they are unexpected. Read full review
100
EmpireIan Freer
Aptly for a film so concerned with time, Button is 13 minutes shy of three hours and just flies by. If this is Fincher selling out, can he sell out more often please? Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
A curious case indeed: an extravagantly ambitious movie that's easy to admire but a challenge to love. Read full review
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
With his usual intelligence, technical virtuosity (the reverse-aging effects are astounding) and storytelling panache, director Fincher gives the film a power and unity that make nearly three hours go by in a flash and pulls its diverse elements together to be something unique for a Hollywood movie -- a true spiritual experience. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Lyrical, original, misshapen and deeply felt, this is one flawed beauty of a movie. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
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 full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
This is a long, impeccably detailed, richly textured movie about a most unusual life, and although it's far from perfect, the sum of it achieves what Fincher set out to do in the first place: Make you blubber like a 6-year-old who just found his pet turtle lying belly-up. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's long, like life, but like life it continually fascinates. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
This odd, epic tale of a man who ages backwards is presented in an impeccable classical manner, every detail tended to with fastidious devotion. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Benjamin never questions his fate and ­never actually gets to enjoy being a kid. At least there's a thoughtful middle part, where the enigmatic Blanchett comes alive and Benjamin seems haunted by life -- someone we recognize, and not just a vessel tossed about by time. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Above all, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a triumph of technique. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
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 full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Worth seeing just for the superb prosthetic makeup and seamless computer-generated effects in which Pitt's head is digitally imposed onto older bodies. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Yet it's worth seeing because the sights are truly something. Claudio Miranda's pearly cinematography, Donald Graham Burt's luscious production design, the visual effects supervised by Eric Barba--everything blends, and none of the seams show. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Question: Is life still like a box of chocolates if you're going in reverse? The answer, in the case of the curiously Gumpian The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, is a gooey yes. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Perhaps the movie might have made more sense if the actors could have taken each other's roles: Pitt always seems light and ageless, while Blanchett never seems to have been young. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Button has a wide-eyed innocence that almost never palls. It strays far from the mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but often enough it came near to my heart. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineJason Buchanan
Brimming with intriguing concepts and brilliant visual effects, making it a stimulating treat for both the eyes and the intellect. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
A gravely beautiful drama about the mysteries of aging and death. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
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 full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
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 full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Attains a level of quiet grace. It's too bad that I can barely remember the movie after only a week. Nothing lasts, indeed. Read full review
60
SalonStephanie Zacharek
It's so almost moving -- a meticulously crafted mechanical bird -- that it nearly feels like the real thing. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
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 full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Realized through old-fashioned camera mastery and newfangled special effects, it’s a stunning technical accomplishment, but one seemingly designed only to broadcast banal sentiments, when it says anything at all. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
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 full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Often astonishingly beautiful, but in a way that's the problem: You wonder what visionaries such as Tim Burton or Michel Gondry might have done with the material. As it is, "Benjamin Button" is little more than "Gump" by way of "Dorian Gray." It plays too safe when it should be letting its freak flag fly. Read full review
50
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Benjamin Button is pretty much just "Gump" with better cinematography. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Based flimsily on a minor F. Scott Fitzgerald story, it's an anecdote stretched to would-be epic proportions. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
Everything that was sharp in the original text has been rounded and buffed. Read full review
40
Village VoiceScott Foundas
Benjamin Button is to the first half of the 20th century what "Gump" was to the second -- a panorama of the American experience as seen from the perspective of a wide-eyed Candide. Here as there, Roth reduces our complex times to a parade of shockingly straight-faced kitsch. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The movie's excruciating length is without dramatic or thematic justification. Read full review
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