The Longest Anything Ever

Just got back from the movie theater. I went to see this year's most promising entry for The Longest Movie Of The Year Oscar as well as The Longest Anything Ever Guiness World Record. I am talking about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is currently up for a title change to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Told In Realtime.

It is a great joy to be writing this. This is one of those great opportunities life gives you to offend lots of people, as this movie is highly rated indeed. People take mortal offense when you attack their likes and dislikes; you say something nasty about a movie they like, and they will murder your family and put animal heads in your bed. But being an orphan, I feel relatively safe from retribution.

As I said, this movie's defining quality is length. You may consider reading the story instead, it will take you half an hour at most. I can't say that the movie is based on the story to any degree, but they do have one thing in common. They take a cool science-fictionish idea, and then proceed to do absolutely nothing interesting with it. The story, however, took me fifteen minutes to read, while the movie left me with gray hair.

The idea is simple but potentially interesting: a guy ages backwards. He's born an old man, and dies an infant. Now let's observe how one transforms this mini-gem into a bottle of sleeping pills.

Let's start with a synopsis, Book-A-Minute-Classics style

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Told In Realtime

(Benjamin Button is born a hideous old man played by a crudely drawn CGI actor)

Everyone: he's hideous! Freak! Freak!

Black Woman With Heart Of Gold: gimme

(Black Woman With Heart of Gold raises the freak)

(Benjamin Button lives for forty years, and then suddenly realizes he's transformed from Gollum's ugly cousin to the apotheosis of magazine-cover male sex appeal: Brad Pitt)

Benjamin Button: holy crap! Did I just get younger? Holy crap! Is that a Cate Blanchett channeling Katherine Hepburn as Female Romantic Lead? Holy crap! Did she just have sex with me?

(Benjamin gets Female Romantic Lead pregnant)

Benjamin Button: well, my job here is done, see ya later.

(Benjamin abandons Female Romantic Lead to her newborn daughter and lame leg)

(Benjamin reverse-ages into a baby and dies)

The End

If it were only that simple. Unfortunately those key events are padded with hours and hours worth of Benjamin stalking around the planet Earth on foot, car and boat, occasionally opening his mouth to say something worthless in a creaky door voice with a Southern accent. Sometimes he goes to a bar and gets drunk. Sometimes he visits his mother. It's like watching a Reality Show, but one with actual reality, and no artificial drama injection.

Blah. I don't want to think about it anymore.


(Chatting with my friend in China)
Pei: k, I am going outside
Mark: i'll go outside too
Pei: k, see u there
Mark: k, i'll be by the tree
Pei: I know where outside is, dude