Marley and Me, Benjamin Button

Cafe Society
1

I just got finished watching these back-to-back. Outside of the fact that both trace the life of a man/family for a significant period of time, there’s no particular relation between the films.

Marley and Me was fully entertaining. The cinematography was not excellent, nor the acting. The story was not ground-breaking. Owen Wilson did successfully portray a character who didn’t sound like a stoner, though, and for that alone it deserves recognition.

But mostly, like I said, it was an entertaining film. It has humor and sadness, and the people are neither dysfunctional, idealists, nor heroes; they’re just people. I suppose that it doesn’t show any story that you couldn’t have lived yourself. Quite likely, you probably have. Still, it doesn’t seem like you’re just watching any other family up on the screen. It smoothly edits from one part to the next to tell a full and satisfying story.

No Oscars for it forthcoming, but I suspect it will be the top grosser before the new year.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is also decently entertaining. It’s quite long since it covers the entire life of two people and so you should go in prepared for a movie of significant length.

The acting was superb, and yet somewhat unexciting. The cinematography was of course beautiful and the aging/de-aging was done very impressively.

It’s not all serious, it’s not all sad nor happy. It’s really got a bit of everything in life even for being a story that is at heart quite fantastical. And perhaps that is the point of it, that life is as life is and the solutions to living it are going to be the same for everyone.

But, if that is all the point there is to the film, it seems to have been much longer and roundabout than needed. Watching it, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything in terms of motifs or symbolism, but it felt like there should have been more there to catch. As it is, it fairly well is just showing the lives of two people with so much more chaff to meat that outside of being pretty and well made, it’s just not interesting enough.

I hope that a second viewing will reveal more, but I suspect that there isn’t. I’m not sure if there is more to the story in the original story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was perhaps missed.

It may be nominated for various Oscars, and certainly David Fincher is an excellent director, but I don’t think it will win anything but the special effects.

2

Marley and Me- It’s sad when the best actor in the movie is the dog. I don’t know how the hell they did it, but the dog was damn near perfect in every scene. Anniston and Wilson were dreadful, and the story wasn’t that great. I laughed at the funny dog scenes, and was bored out of my mind pretty much every other time. If you ever had to put down a dog, this might tug at your heart strings. It was way too ham fisted to have much of an effect on me. Except, again somehow, the dog nailed the scene, and looking into his eyes was a bit sad.

3

I saw Benjamin Button this afternoon. I LOVED the movie, and I sure hope it gets nominated for some makeup/cgi awards. Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swanson look too much alike though, and I got their characters mixed up. Its a 3 hour movie that feels like a 2 hour movie - there’s a lot to it, but except maybe for the scenes at sea, it doesn’t remain on any one time period too long, so the feeling of dragging on isn’t there.

Also, the old version of Daisy was literally PAINFUL to listen to. What was the point of the Hurricane Katrina setting anyway? The movie didn’t even go anywhere with it!

And for the record, the film version and short story version have almost NOTHING in common. It was completely rewritten, keeping ONLY the premise of a person who ages backwards

As for Marley and Me…Owen Wilson and Jen Aniston are two of my least fav actors, and I don’t think a cute puppy is enough to balance that out, so I’m passing.

4

I’ve not read the Fitzgerald short story, but I understand it’s quite different, a comic farce. Button was born a full-grown old man, 5’8", with beard down to his waist and a fully developed intellect, and turned into a little child and baby playing with toys and being bottle-fed at the end of his life.

5

I figured that was on purpose. He was naturally attracted to a Daisy-like woman, but who was more mature than the real one.