The Curious Case of Benjamin Boredom

I really enjoyed the first time I saw the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Of course, the first time I saw it the film was called Big Fish.

It took me (and my lovely wife) two days to finish watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Although we did not stop at any particular point in the movie, I can say without hesitation that both halves of the film were painfully boring. It is amazing to me that this film was nominated for several Academy Awards and that critics and fans have said with a straight face that the special effects and/or storytelling was groundbreaking and emotional. I will venture to say that this film was not only poorly conceived (it is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald), it was poorly written, poorly acted, poorly edited and once again there was no quality control from the Studio when it comes to verifying that the story was consistent and that no loose ends were left untied. I guess the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences just can’t get enough of films with half completed stories and self-aggrandizing special effects (That goes for you too James Cameron).

I thought this film was so poorly made and the story was so fuzzy that I did some additional research. I have a ground breaking surprise for the loyal readers of this blog. I am going to give you something you can find nowhere else.

First though I am going to quickly summarize the story of Benjamin Button. At the beginning of this film a blind clock maker lost his son in WWI. That blind clockmaker secured the contract to build a clock in a train station. The clockmaker built the clock so that the second hand would tick backwards but the hour and minute hands would tick forwards (thus reminding everyone of the time they had lost watching this movie). Now, for what ever reason (this information is never tied to anything or explained any further) Benjamin Button is born an old man whose mother dies in childbirth and whose father abandons him at an old folks home. And, as you have probably heard, Benjamin Button gets physically younger as he ages and eventually turns into Brad Pitt.

So, other than the fact that he is aging backwards, pretty much nothing of interest happens in the life of Benjamin Button. He travels, he loves, he loses and he wonders in and out of a poor Cajun accent. Without getting too far off topic, can anyone name me an accent that Hollywood can pull off other than a standard Midwestern American accent? When you watch this movie I think you will find that Brad Pitt’s attempt at a Cajun accent makes Adam Sandler’s Israeli accent in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan sound like Yitzhak Rabin. Maybe I should write a letter to President Obama to tell him that we can find literally hundreds of stimulus jobs by having any American with an accent go to Hollywood to teach their accent to actors and actresses. The President promised us 600,000 new stimulus jobs this summer…by my count this would leave us with only 599,800 more to be created!

As I said earlier, I have seen this movie before. I liked it when it was called Big Fish, my wife liked it when it was call The Notebook, and my sister like it when it was called Stand By Me. Unfortunately, unlike the three movies mentioned, Benjamin Button really had nothing exciting happen in his life. If Jack Nicholson had been in this movie they would have just called it About Schmidt 2.

As I was saying, Benjamin Button was born old and to the amazement or questioning of not one single person he got physically younger as he aged. Benjamin was born with the ability to walk, talk, think and make time with the ladies. Benjamin died without the ability to walk, talk, or think.

One of the other quirks about this film is that (as a flashback picture) it is half narrated by Daisy - the female lead (Cate Blanchett) and her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond of First Knight fame). The quirk is that the film’s Director (David Fincher) decided that Daisy’s narration should be done in a nearly inaudible old-lady voice. Daisy probably has fifty individual lines of dialogue to set up various flashbacks and banter and I think I might have put the pieces together on two of those lines. For all I know she could have been explaining the holes in the story or telling dirty jokes – although I assume it was neither.

This particular flashback picture was flowing out of a diary written by Benjamin Button. The diary is pretty self explanatory and helps the story boringly move along except for in one crucial place. At one point Caroline is reading the diary and she announces that there are several pages missing. She also indicates that the next available page is stained and it is hard to make out all of the words. No further information was presented in the film with regard to the missing (Watergate) pages. I could not let this go.

Where did the missing pages go? What secrets lie in those missing pages? After extensive research I have located the missing diary pages and I am going to print them for you below. What you are about to read has never been publicly disclosed. This may be the most insignificant find in a generation!

“I was painting the backyard fence of my home this morning. The man at the paint store put a can of ivory white into the paint stirring machine and flipped the switch. The man turned to pick up a dime on the ground and the poorly secured can shot out of the stirring machine and broke through the paint store window.

Meanwhile, an aging insurance salesman was walking down the street near the paint store on his way to a sales meeting with the owner of the book store at the corner of 7th and Bayou. The route the insurance salesman was taking was not a normal route from his office. The more efficient route of 6th Street had been blocked a morning earlier when a newly installed water main broke and flooded the sidewalk.

Next door to the paint store the maintenance man of the Hotel was changing the light bulb in the letter O (the sign had read HTEL for several weeks). The maintenance man was clinging to his ladder with his left hand while trying to put the light bulb into the O with his right hand. He could not quite reach the screw-thread base of the letter O so he removed his left hand from the ladder to try to pull himself ever so slightly closer to the base. Unfortunately, the maintenance man’s balance was lost and he slipped from the ladder and towards the ground below.

The insurance salesman was walking on his way to the book store when the poorly secured can of ivory white paint came out of the paint store window and struck him in the chest.

At that moment a school bus drove by carrying the visiting students from East Central State College in Ada, Oklahoma. On the bus was an unknown student named Mae Boren Axton who was sitting in the back of the bus observing the bustling city street.

If just one thing had been different. If the Public Works Director had not hammered the new water main with such vigor to have caused a crack, the insurance salesman would not have to change the route to his appointment and would not have walked by the paint store. If the man at the paint store had secured the can of ivory white into the paint stirring machine it would not have come lose and broke through the store window. If the hotel maintenance man had climbed down his ladder and moved it over a half inch he would never have had to stretch to reach the base of the letter O. If the school bus from East Central State College would have not run a stop light two blocks earlier.

If just one thing had been different then Mae Boren Axton would not have heard the insurance salesman lying in front of the paint store yelling “I am having a heart attack" and heard the maintenance man lying below the HOTEL sign yelling “I broke my leg.”

If just one thing had been different Mae Boren Axton would not have gotten the idea for a song called Heartbreak Hotel.”

Wow, can you believe the information that was in the three lost pages of Benjamin Button’s diary. It really makes me think about all of the things that had to go wrong in order for me to have ended up watching this film.

Oh, and a guy got struck by lightning seven times. I liked this plot development the first time I saw it - when it was in The Great Outdoors.

Warren