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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a bildungsroman (that’s right, I’ve been to COLLEGE) about a man named Benjamin Button whose case is very curious. He is born as an old man, and as he ages he gets younger and younger, until he turns into a baby and dies. That’s pretty much it, but imagine that it took three hours to read that sentence. Oh sure, he meets some characters along the way, I guess, and he eventually falls in love with Cate Blanchett. But mostly his life is actually pretty straight forward, it just gets kind of weird around the ends. Oh, and the whole thing is told through a journal that Benjamin Button wrote for his daughter, which she reads aloud to a dying Cate Blanchett in the hospital during a hurricane. So it’s basically The Notebook, but with a reverse-aging man-baby. Perfect.
Here is the curious case of why this movie stinks:
AHHHHHH, WHAT IS THIS THING?!
So, Benjamin Button was born in New Orleans at the end of World War I and he was a baby but he kind of looked like an old man, and he had all kinds of old man problems, so his dad tried to throw him in the river but that didn’t work so his dad left him at a retirement home with a black woman who raised him as her own. Eventually he got a wheel chair! Neat! And then he started working on a boat. OK! And then he fell in love with a nine-year-old. Yikes! Eventually he went to Russia. Sure! And he fell in love with Tilda Swinton for awhile. Tilda Swinton! But then it was World War II and he had to go do that instead. Careful! A bunch of people died. And then he went home. And he finally met his real dad. And his real dad was like, “I’m sorry I tried to throw you in the river, here is my button factory.” THIS MOVIE HAS ACTUAL BUTTONS IN IT.
Eventually Brad Pitt stops being an ugly old man and starts being BRAD PITT. Now we are talking! And Cate Blanchett is a dancer, but she gets hit by a car in Paris. Whoops! Eventually she comes back to America and falls in love with Brad Pitt (WHO WOULDN’T?) and they sell the button factory (I REPEAT: THIS MOVIE HAS ACTUAL BUTTONS IN IT) and they buy a duplex. But now Cate Blanchett is pregnant and Brad Pitt is nervous Forest Gump-style that the baby is going to be an old woman. Cate Blanchett don’t care because of how love works. But Brad Pitt knows that he can’t raise a child when he is a child himself soon, so he goes to India. Wait, India? Well, he goes to India. And then he turns into a fucking baby and dies.
Now look, this is no the Worst Movie of All Time (although it might be the LONGEST), and David Fincher is a really good director, and Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are good actresses, so let’s just chalk this up as a brave, ambitious failure. But make no mistake: it is a failure. Big time.
First of all, BENJAMIN BUTTON’S CASE IS NOT EVEN THAT CURIOUS. He does all the things normal people do. He learns how to walk when he is little. He loses his virginity. He gets a job. He falls in love and has a kid. I’ll admit that it is kind of curious casewise when he looks like an old man baby, and it is definitely a very curious case indeed when he turns into a fucking baby right before dying. But it’s almost SPOOKY how normal his life is for the most part. And if we could just talk about him turning into a goddamned baby before he dies: what? I mean, please, movie, you are already taxing my willful suspension of disbelief to its limits as it is, but if he is born as a baby sized old man, then it only follows, LOGICALLY, that he should die as a man-sized baby. None of this shit:
But lots of this shit:
Now, at its heart, the movie is supposed to be a love story. Aww! Who doesn’t love a nice love story? No one doesn’t love a nice love story. The problem is that this love story: AH NOT AH SO NICE. The thing is, and this is true throughout most of the movie, if you were to write this story down, it could be interesting and touching and curious. But when you put it on film it just gets real creepy real fast. For example:
Uhhhh. Yikes? I mean, Benjamin Button is supposed to only be, like, 12 at this point, so it makes sense that he likes this little girl. The problem is that he sure does not look 12! And it is one thing when it is a weird CGI homunculus buried under 17 pounds of make up, but later, when he finally leaves home at the age of “17,” he is actually just Brad Pitt. Officers!
To make matters even more complicated, Brad Pitt, now in his “20s,” goes to Russia and falls in love with Tilda Swinton.
OK, but, is he in love with young people his own “age” or is he in love with old people who look his age? I’m not saying that 20-year-old men can’t fall for older women, we all know that’s not true…
But it was already pretty gross when he was a young man who looked like an old man ogling a little girl, and now that he is a young man who looks like an old man and acts like an old man, it is super grosser. The thing that was the most disappointing about the movie, though, was the fact that it didn’t really deal with the curiosity behind Benjamin’s case in any meaningful way. Aging and dying are things that everyone deals with (Duh Aficionado Magazine: The Health Issue) and spends a fair amount of time at least thinking about if not struggling with, and yet this movie pretty much glosses over the whole thing. “What would it be like to enjoy the fruits of youth when you had the wisdom of an adult?” NO QUESTIONS! Well, one question is answered: if you were to age in reverse, would you have a bunch of fake-looking zits on your face in your “golden years”? Answer: you betcha.
And again, all of this (well, maybe not the zits, but almost all of this) could be interesting and beautiful in a novel. But when the aging Benjamin Button develops a case of dementia and no longer remembers his lover, what in prose might have been a delicate examination of the painful emotional toll of a life nearing its end, becomes actual comedy.
HAHAHAHHAHHA. Why does he have dementia, anyway? Wasn’t he born as an old man with old man health problems? So shouldn’t he die as a giant baby with baby problems? My apologies to this movie for thinking about it and pretending like it should have any kind of consistent internal logic. I will stop asking so many questions and start thinking about how handsome Brad Pitt is.
Nice try, Brad Pitt. I still remember that this movie was way too long and way too boring and way too confused and no amount of puppy dog eyes are going to chan–HI, BRAD PITT!
Next week: Envy. As always, please leave your suggestions in the comments or in an email. And if you haven’t done so already, please consult the Official Rules.
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They really should have gone with the original title, “Honey, I Reverse-Aged The Kid!”
(P.S. sorry, I forgot that was already the title of another F. Scott Fitzgerald short story)
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┴┬┴／＼ ／ ﹨
┬┴∕ ／ ）
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┴◢██◣ ＼＿＿／
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┬│ │█████◤ ▏
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┬∕ ∕ ／▔▔▔＼ ∕
*∕＿＿_／﹨ ∕ ＼ ／＼
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┴┬┴┬┴┬┴ ＼＿＿＿＼ ﹨／
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Yeah, I’ve just about had it with your hypocritical bullshit, Gabe (sarcasm, I guess).
Relax, Steve. Gabe contains multitudes, or something.
You crazy for that one, That One
Perfect logic great job!
The Curious Case of Benjamin Linus.
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Actually, I think you might have a point. It reminds me of my town’s last mayoral election in which the challenger got CREAMED at the last minute. He had campaigned on a hardline anti-orange platform and had a lot of support until the week before the election, when he was photographed eating an APPLE! The photos were all over our dailies for the entire week as the anti-orange lobby worked voters into a fury over the obvious hypocrisy. The incumbent won by a thirty point margin and our local politics were forever changed by what is now called Applegate.
Calm down, Technowinwood.
I think I’ve been perfectly calm and you guys are the ones who are upset. Look, there is quite a lot in common between LOST and the Benjamin Button movie, and if you really enjoy watching one but really hate the other, then a friend pointing out that disconnect to you is a valuable point to make. I will go in to it in more detail later.
I’m not being snarky or anything, but could youplease follow up on this? I’m really curious (I am so sorry) to know what you think the similarities are (no sarcasm).
Even if they were really similar, it’s a matter of taste and quality. I love Carpenter’s Halloween, but I hate a whole bunch of other slashers. I’m a huge fan of Seven Samurai, but can take or leave Magnificent Seven. I really don’t see how that constitutes hypocrisy.
Wait, are you Gus Van Sant? You’re Gus van Sant, aren’t you? “I really don’t understand why people hated my Psycho when Hitchcock’s is a classic. They’re the exact same movie?!”
-Your tombstone (you have a really big tombstone)
Well, to be fair, people have been whining about Gabe being too hard on Lost recently. So Gabe hates everything. That or his comedic voice on this blog is all negative Nancy.
I know that it isn’t possible to win the internet here with one great comment, but I would like to add to the Benjamin Button v. Lost discussion. Some background, I love LOST and I thought BB was a bucket full of millipede vomit. Here’s one reason why:
BB’s essential problem, all fantasy stuff aside, is that it is a cheap and easy”love” story. It is nothing more than Forrest Gump (I was at all these important events in the 20th C.) + Titanic (Doomed Love! with CGI!). The history of the World during the 20th C. is used as nothing more than cheap coloring to a cheap story. I think we can all agree that the last century was full of some wonderful and horrific things, but rather than explore this in any way, the film opted to just use the century as neato bedazzling. Forrest Gump was better. Take that as you will.
Plus, BB was packed with so many “meaningful” moments that were in fact not meaningful, but instead Heavy Handed. The one I remember is when BB is at sea during WWII and the captain with the hummingbird tatoo dies (spoiler) and then BB sees the hummingbird. Okay, so this could probably have worked as a nice moment, but the film did not trust us to understand so we get some voice over pointing out the hummingbird and basically sticking our nose in it like a dog in its own crap.
So, to sum, BB’s essential problem is that it is a superficial and heavy handed entertainment which in no way enriches the human soul.
Lost is bonkers; has loose ends; contradicts itself; meanders; etc. I will not argue otherwise. However I don’t think that you could argue that Lost is too obvious, holds our hand or does not trust its audience. Yes, it can be a bit much at times, but the handling of its themes I find to be very artfully handled. Yeah, yeah, “good and evil”, but I don’t think that’s the main point of the show. Or, the intersting themes all lead to those poles. Trust, community, compassion, and love–these human concerns are what the show is really about. The time travel and what-not, they exist to illuminate our understanding of the essnetial human concerns. If you could do it all over again, would you make the same choices? The same mistakes? Do you understand why you did what you did better? Lost is a much richer and more interesting tapestry.
Also: Juliet!
umm…I just think everything you say is angry because of your scary rat face…d avatar …now if you were a cute baby with headphones or a Jon Stewart with a sassy mustache OR EVEN a fun-time cupcake that would be different. You’d still be wrong, but it’d be different.
She’s right you know, everybodyis a sucker for a sarcastic baby.
Let’s ease you into something you’re comfortable with:
yeah but how old is this baby?
YAY!
SHOUT-OUT!
Lol nice try.
You missed the point big guy.
I watched this movie this weekend only because I knew it was coming up for judgment, and what I loved was that the other character’s reaction to grandpa baby was exactly my reaction to Brad Pitt at all times which he was in makeup.
I saw this on an airplane (because I make bad airplane movie choices) and we were about to touch down and there was about fifteen minutes of the movie left and I was going to be so pissed if I had sat through that WHOLE BORING MOVIE and missed the ending because I was not going to find it and watch it in real life!
Fortunately the taxi to the gate took just long enough and I hit the credits just as the cabin lights to come on…I’m sure I missed a hellova stinger though.
And that was on a flight from Chicago to Singapore! Because this movie is THE LONGEST.
I just flew in from Texas and boy are my buttons tired. I’m going up to the Catskills to be a comedian. Wish me luck!
You are not kidding! It literally took me three sittings to finish it. I could feel myself aging while it dragged on and on and I don’t mean aging backward, either.
ZING!
my prayers have bin answered.
165 minute video headshot.
I think Tim and Eric could have done something good with this premise. The Curious Case of Baby PepPep.
i had high hopes for this, but was so disappointed. i hated forest gump and this seemed like forest gump 2. “look at all the wacky characters i meet during my life” is not so interesting to me.
a movie i did not have high hopes for was Failure to Launch. it should really be included in the hunt.
“…if he is born as a baby sized old man, then it only follows, LOGICALLY, that he should die as a man-sized baby.”
EXACTLY. That was my biggest problem with this movie.
I read an interview where David Fincher was asked why the movie didn’t end that way, and his answer was quite literally “I ran out of money.”
I think the title is more F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fault than the movie’s, Gabe, and even then I think he just liked the alliteration of it.
but yes yes yes to everything else. this movie was so long!
I DON’T LOVE A NICE LOVE STORY!
Even if it’s about cookies?
I saw this movie in a theater with reclining seats and tables and instead of corn dogs, you can eat grape leaves and drink a whole bottle of wine, by yourself. So the only thing I remember about it is this: when Brad Pitt becomes the most beautiful, age-appropriate, and muscled version of himself, everyone cheered, or gasped, or something. I guess because we had our guy back, for a moment.
Where do you go to the movies? Mt. Olympus?
That is exactly what i said (out loud) when reading this comment.
either there or in Bill Gates home theater? Maybe James Cameron’s?
I have only done this once, but in San Francisco (where I do not live) there is a theater called the Sundance Kabuki and you pick your seat and there is a bar off to the side that serves you bottles of wine and artisinal snacks like paninis, if you’re an adult.
I go to a theater like that. Or, more accurately, I stay home in a theater like that.
Honestly they just spread the sexual taboos too thin. They should have picked one pairing of old man/12 year old girl/40 year old woman/man-baby and stuck with it.
Dear Videogum Staff: I once again nominate the 2009 film Amelia, the biopic about aviatrix Amelia Earhart starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere, for The Worst Movie of All Time. This is a truly awful film.
The following gif serves well as a metaphor for my viewing experience of this film.
Imagine, if you will, that child in blue holding the struggling cat is actress Hilary Swank.
Next, imagine that the cat is success and glory and quality acting. We’ll call it “Oscar III.” (Or is it dunking the cat that would be winning the Academy Award? Not sure)
The rest of us are watching in horror from the background. No! we scream in silent horror. We aren’t really worried for the cat, who is plenty smart, but we’re dismayed by Hilary, and relieved only that Oscar wasn’t the one worst hurt in the whole process. (That would be us watched the movie, of course, okay I got to finish this, this analogy is getting confusing)
Now Oscar slinks away to his owner, Sandra Bullock, who isn’t great but hey, she wasn’t trying to THROW A CAT INTO A SWIMMING POOL.
(Sorry, I’m getting all tangled up in my analogies here. Anyways. Movie stinks, WMOAT worthy, please do it, etc etc.)
I shall be here next week and every week with a similar strained metaphor till this film’s inclusion is secure. Good day and thank you for your time.
Or maybe we (the audience) are the Benjamin Button-esque man-baby, and the movie Amelia is the cat who has duped our dementia-riddled bodies into once again falling the Fountain of Youth, thus ensuring our march towards an untimely demise? That sounds good; I’ll go with that.
and by “falling the Fountain of Youth” I of course meant “falling INTO the Fountain of Youth” but I was just way too busy making my great analaphor to be caught up in schematics. Also, my spelling is impeccabull.
When I read the comments on my phone, gifs are sloooowed down to an amusingly slow pace. This took about 20 seconds to happen and it was great. So, thanks.
At this point I hope that Amelia never makes it in, because i so look forward to your rant/gif combinations each week.
I hope Gabe reviews it and loves it, forcing werttrew to rethink how he spent his Monday afternoons for the past couple months and resulting in some sort of .gif fueled tirade in the comments.
I like the fact that before I even read these Amelia-related posts by werttrew, I upvote him because I know everything I read will be hilarious and great! Keep up the great work!
werttrew, I am sincerely worried that the quality of your petitions is actually preventing this movie for a WMOAT review. They’re so good I feel like Gabe can’t help but delay the review so we can all enjoy your pleas (that sounds so morbid). So, thank you for the weekly entertainment and I unfortunately can’t say that I hope Amelia gets reviewed because your posts about it are so great!
You know, if wondering what is up with Topher Grace can be a regular feature with its own link on the front page, I don’t see why “submitting Amelia for the WMOAT” shouldn’t get its own category up there.
Yes, that took me over an hour. Stop looking at my timestamps.
That’s So Beastful
I saw this in theaters with my parents on Christmas and at he time I just found it to be silly and boring and mostly harmless. However, when it was nominated for 13 f’ing Oscars, I think it crossed into WMOAT territory. Not for being bad but for being considered good. So maybe its the WMOATTBCWOTAAN (The Worst Movie of All Time to Be Considered Worthy of Thirteen Academy Award Nominations)
In my experience, any movie that you see while you’re visiting your folks for the holidays seems at least fifty percent better than it actually is, because it’s nice to get out of the house and not have to talk.
And that’s the story of how I paid $13 to see All About Steve.
Well, I hope you guys are happy. Your parents love you and only want to spend time with their children, (who do not call nearly enough, only to borrow money) and you can’t spend the time to tell them what you are up to? When are you going to get married anyway?
i just got back from a week in the midw
i am not going to finish that comment. something happened a few words in, i lost interest, accidentally submitted it, and now it’s over with.
Yes! This exactly. I saw this when I went home to see my folks around the holidays as well, and I wonder if my love of this movie was just euphoria for having an excuse to get out of the house for a bit. I would have to watch it again to be sure, but since I don’t have 3 hours of my normal life to give to a movie I’ve already seen, I’ll just let it live on in my mind as a good movie.
That being said, that picture of Brad Pitt looking like a real doll scares the bejesus out of me.
Wait, you went *on* Christmas? Was this part of the Jewish celebration of Christmas in which Jewish members of a largely Christian community go to the movies and get Chinese food for dinner? As a Catholic I’ve never had the pleasure, but all of my Jewish friends recount the wonders of no traffic and no lines for anything. I am truly envious and I hope to partake someday.
I’m still laughing at “ENTERTAINMENT WALLPAPER DOT COM.”
What role do Werther’s Originals play in the life of an old-man-baby/baby-old-man? Does he never know of them? Does he give them to himself and pretend to like them? If this was not addressed in the film, how else did they fill 180 minutes?
Actually, I’m kind of mad Gabe neglected to mention this, the singular poignant moment in the film. To answer your question, the old-man baby Brad Pitt had an insatiable appetite for Werther’s but due to his tiny baby esophagus, he could not enjoy them without threat of choking. After he nearly dies and his black nurse mom uses the knowledge she gained with her advanced 1920’s medical degree to perform the baby Heimlich, old-man baby Brad Pitt angrily throws the bag of Werther’s he was hiding under his pillow out of his crib and screams something in baby gibberish.
Several people in the theater when I saw it wept and one old man shouted “The horror!”
During which time period did he carry around a bunch of spare nickels to give to the (other?) grandkids? Old man baby? Baby old man? Old babyman? My brain hurts.
P.S.) Disclosure, with Demi Moore and that guy with the chin thing. I have no gifs. Please don’t penalize me.
I agree that the movie was full of contradictory cringe inducing age pairings. =(
the curious case of how i stopped worrying and came to love videogum’s new layout finally!
I actually enjoyed this movie…Of course I went convincing myself that I was seeing a re-imagining of “Mork & Mindy,” so I think I had an unfair advantage.
Nailed it. I remember the Mork cartoon (perennial nominee for Worst Anything Anytime) in which his parents were little kids; I think Fincher figured they fully dealt with all the nuances of reverse aging, so instead he just focused on ruining three hours of millions of strangers’ lives.
Also the whole Katrina thing seemed unnecessarily schmaltzy and heartstring-tying
yes oh god 100x yes. and, um, see below for my impassioned stance on that. like. props for brad pitt and all he’s done for new orleans, but that shit was just hamfisted and annoyed everyone i know who’s seen the movie. just smooshing that it doesn’t make your movie more emotional, it makes it vaguely exploitative to utilize that experience to try to make it more emotional.
Chris “Bicentennial Man” Columbus saw this movie and said, “Wow, that’s some cloying, schmaltzy-ass crap!” THAT’S how schmaltzy and pandering it was.
In like to pretend Chris Columbus stopped making movies after Mrs. Doubtfire
I like to pretend that Chris Columbus started making movies after discovering America.
yes. this. of all of the stupid forest gumpy things in this movie, adding the katrina element made me hate it the most. I can’t even remember the entire contrivance, but at some point it just felt really selfish how they were making the whole hospital staff basically risk their lives just so they could finish the neverending story.
aaaaactually, a lot of hospital staff did have to stay. a lot actually even brought their families to the hospitals before the storm hit because they were used as a place of refuge. and it was a total fucking dystopian nightmare for all involved. here’s a fun story about what happened in memorial hospital: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html
but that’s the hospital out east. i’m assuming for various reasons that the hospital scene in this film took place in either charity or tuoro, which both faced their own complications. what i’m saying is, never underestimate how many people were in the city doing various jobs when the storm actually hit. a lot of people look at katrina and wonder why so many people stayed. well, they had to, job wise, or they couldn’t leave for various reasons. also, evacuating sucks balls and costs a lot of money. it took my boyf something like 22 hours to get to texas during the katrina evac.
and if you think the story about memorial is bad, just go investigate what happened in the fucking prisons here. hint: prisoners drowned in their cells! (supposedly. no one really knows because no one can get a real story from the prison system. but there’s a lot of dead and missing inmates.)
and those stories are why i’m pissed that katrina was included the way it was included. god forbid hollywood ever actually tries to do a katrina movie. which i’m sure is in the works.
You left out the worst part! The WORST PART was the shoehorning of Hurricane Katrina into the plot! Or maybe that’s just the worst part for me. Also, my boyf was an extra in this movie. Though that doesn’t make me hate it any less.
great minds and such
Was he able to use his aging backwards like a superpower and warn everyone about the hurricane?
Is that not how it works?
I really hated this movie…and Ben Lyons had no chance of ever gaining any respect from me (haha) after he called it the best movie of the year.
“One of the greatest movies ever made!”
-Ben Lyons, in reference to I Am Legend starring Will Smith
This is an actual quote and not a joke.
He gets paid to write good reviews I think.
He should work for Variety! (thank you I will be here all week)
To be fair, they won’t write a positive review for money. They’ll write the bad review first and then take it down for $400k. That’s a completely different situation (that is not a completely different situation).
That said, you’ll soon need about $200/yr to even read the bad review or notice it was removed. So I guess the whole thing is moot. Just like Variety!
#industrialtradepublicationsgum
I was SURE that quote had to be a joke, and that if it was not, there had to be some super interesting story behind it, so I just spent 15 minutes googling Ben Lyons, who I’d never heard of, and found out that he replaced Ebert on At the Movies and this is indeed actually what he said and meant, and that there is nothing remotely interesting going on with it. Unless me now crying on the inside is interesting. Thanks a lot, Universe!
I nominate Dragonfly, starring Kevin Costner. Again.
I’m sort of surprised that Gabe didn’t like this movie more. Because he’s an old man. And old man minds think alike. Unless they have dimentia. And are small children. Or something. I’m probably just confused about all the metaphors in this movie. Clocks that run backwards! Get it? No. I do not get it. That isn’t what happened at all. Or is it? I don’t know.
What I do know is, I wish there was a clock that moved forwards, but really fast. Especially during the movie The Love Guru. Which I would, once again, like to submit as my choice for Worst Movie of All Time. Because it is. I will be here, every week. Unfailingly submitting it. As constant as the passing of time on a backwards clock.
He is a pretty, pretty man.
I would like to submit for consideration, 2009’s Fast & Furious, based on nothing but this exchange:
[In this scene Paul Walker's Character is looking for a suspect who is also a street racer (because of course he is)]
Walker: What do you got?
Lady Cop: All right. A 45-year-old
male in a ‘06 Scion with three reckless driving tickets.
Walker: No.
Lady Cop: An ‘01 Chevy Tahoe.
Walker: No.
Lady Cop: Two Mini Coopers,
a ‘06 and a ‘07,
a Toyota hybrid.
Walker: Hell no. [because Hybrids are NotFast NotFurious]
Lady Cop: A ‘98 Saturn,
a ‘95 Sebring. [I guess the Sebring!]
A ‘98 Nissan with an illegal mod.
Walker: Wait. That’s it.
Lady Cop: What?
The 240 with the illegal mod.
How do you know?
Walker: ‘Cause that’s something l’d drive.
Deep stuff, Please Consider.
-The E*Trade baby
I know, I know! It was the word “illegal” that tipped him off, right? Or “mod.” Probably.
The short story is only 64 pages. 64 pages of Benjamin Button is quite charming. 2 hours and 40 minutes of Benjamin Button is neither charming nor curious. It’s tedious.
In the short story, isn’t he just magically born as a fully grown old man? Thus, none of the logical problems with how an old man baby should grow up into a full sized man baby.
I would like to nominate “Year of the Dog” for The Hunt. I think John C. Reilly and Peter Saaaaaarssgaaaard are big enough stars to make the cut. It is seriously awful. And boring. And heavy handed. And a waste of precious precious talent. Do it, Gabe!
I actually really loved this movie a lot.
It was nice to look at, well enough acted, and had an interesting, cozy, semi-charming atmosphere to it. And while last 20 minutes or so in particular are pretty awful and time could easily have been trimmed throughout… the truth is that I liked the languid, detached pacing. I found the whole experience kind of relaxing, like taking a long walk on a Sunday morning.
That’s all!
I know what you mean Spencer. I hated this movie for all the laziness from people I usually admire but …
a) the outdoor church meeting on a windy night
b) growing up in the old person home
c) a cold winter in Russia with Tilda Swinton
all lovely. Just lovely.
I went into this movie suspecting it was going to be like someone handing me an old dead fish that I’d have to sit and cradle for 3 hours, and basically that is what happened. But, Stockholm style, I began to find things I liked about this fish. Genuinely liked. You could carve 3 or 4 decent, 10-minute short films out of the overall fail and keep those. Just throw the rest away.
All the way away.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grave is like a 10 minute walk from my house. After I saw this movie, I went there and apologized on behalf of everyone who worked on this movie.
I must admit, I laughed the hardest when you called Brad Pitt an actress. I only like high-brow comedy, clearly, because I’m classy.
Oh, and my mom couldn’t decide what her favorite movie of 2008 was: it was a toss up between this and Marley & Me. Doesn’t that just say it all?
I bet if you listened hard enough you could here the slow creaky sound of his body spinning rotisserie style in its grave.
All the 16 year old girls I know hate me for seriously disliking this movie. I guess it’s probably because I watched it during my senior year and was too busy focusing on college than this three hour movie about a man-child, literally. And the love story was very creepy and weird and those accents. About as good as True Blood accents (which we all know are very good.)
I don’t know that many 16 year old girls, that’s weird.
I don’t hate you, bummertime.
I didn’t see this movie because my time is VALUABLE (this from the woman who just watched Hackers for about the elevendy-hundreth time), but that first screen grab is really all I need.
Once again, with apologies to Jason Schwartzman, who is great, I nominate Marie Antoinette. The movie is a glorified montage of cupcakes and frolicking with puppies. Which is normally great, but not when presented as high drama.
He’s telling her how insipid this movie is.
In no way is Marie Antoinette “presented as high drama.”
I’d say more, but I’m fairly certain I’ve had this fight with you in some previous WMOAT comments section…
Most underrated film of the past decade. Easily.
Sorry Antoinette-Heads, I think CindiLightballoon is right on this one.
I don’t know if you meant it as a pun, but “Antoinette-Heads” cracked me up. Because decapitations.
Too soon?
OF COURSE it was an intentional pun (it was certainly not an intentional pun).
definitely not even in a WMOAT category. Some of the insipid, I think, was intentional.
I’m with you again this week Cindi. I REALLY dislike this movie, but not as much as Lost in Translation: based on the novel “Being a Rich White Girl is Hard” by Sophia Coppola. I realize neither of these are actually even close to being WMOAT, but they both rank pretty high on my list of movies that make me angry (MTMMA.)
I nominate Lost and Delirious, an awful movie with Mischa Barton and Piper Perabo, if they count as A or B-list stars.
I dont comment a lot. Mainly because I feel that I have nothing of value to say, or because I usually just become annoyed by commenters who try to imitate Gabe’s style of writing or who simply agree with whatever Gabe says. But there is one place I always comment, and that is in The Worst Movie of All Time posts. And that is always to nominate the same movie:
The Prime Gig.
Starring Vince Vaughn. Many haven’t seen it, and they should feel blessed. Vince Vaughn finds himself caught up in the crazy and fast paced world of high stakes telemarketing, which is something that nobody cares about and probably doesn’t exist or even make sense, and shouldn’t be made into a movie. But it was. and OH MY GOD IT WAS TERRIBLE. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TAKE THIS MOVIE INTO CONSIDERATION.
Uh-oh saturnian. What if Gabe reviews The Prime Gig and simply agrees with everything you’ve said about it? A wormhole would open: you would be forced to confront the paradox of hating people who agree with Gabe only to realize you are a person who is asking Gabe to agree with you, and then consequently being supported in your opinion by people agreeing with Gabe. Twirling into a mirror universe is where’d you be, until you landed face to face with a version of yourself — identical, yet unrecognizable (probably with a goatee, or without a goatee if you have a goatee in this dimension) — and at that moment: your horrible obliteration.
Maybe Gabe should not review The Prime Gig.
I want to create more accounts to upvote you.
Maybe I should clarify: I don’t get annoyed by people simply agreeing with what Gabe says, as I often do myself. However, I do get annoyed when people automatically take on the same opinion as his, without any thought of their own on the matter. Sometimes it seems like people here take whatever Gabe says as the gospel, and anyone who disagrees with his opinion gets downvoted and attacked. as you have done yourself to my post. which only included a small mention of my annoyance. I think I’ve made my point clear now, don’t you?
Clear, yes. Witty, no.
It’s okay. Don’t get worked up. VG is good not because of just Gabe, (Gabe’s funny yes) but because Monsters are nice, to each other at least, and many of them are really really funny.
Second.
I nominate Camille. Not an adaptation of the respected Dumas play. The movie that features James Franco giving a bewigged Sienna Miller a sensual formaldehyde massage.*
*Actual event in movie.
I’ve never actually been to this site/blog before. I dropped by to see the Hugh Laurie audition tape, and caught sight of the worst movie of all time thingy. Then I was curious because I actually liked Benjamin Button (I’m a Fincher fan – not counting Alien 3 of course) so I came to have a look. I will admit, as much as I liked BB, I was WAY more entertained by the comments above! ALL YOU JOKERS ARE HILARIOUS!!!! I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard. It started with the man sized baby killing cars, and by the time I got to the kid throwing the cat in the pool, I was laughing so hard I was crying and snot was coming out of my nose! No fooling! You guys SLAY ME! Oh, and the guy who hates Disclosure. Demi was HOT in that movie. It can’t be the worst movie of all time if the director is talented enough to make Demi Moore look hot. If so, St. Elmo’s Fire would have to be nominated. Oh, wait a minute…I take it all back. I just realized I was accidentally defending St. Emilio’s Burn. Forget I said anything. And here’s another question. Wouldn’t you RATHER pretend Chris Columbus stopped making films BEFORE Mrs. Doubtfire? You can’t suggest BB was cloying and then try to say that Doubtfire was NOT? I mean, how do you take a movie with ROBIN WILLIAMS IN DRAG no less, and have it go SOOO VERY WRONG? You have made me think though. Because one of the reason’s I was going to defend Benjamin Button is because it just LOOKS so good. It’s really pretty. But then somebody went and mentioned Marie Antoinette. Which is one of the prettiest films I’ve ever seen. And certainly one of the worst. Man, those cakes and puppies were beautifully filmed. But that piece of treacle was like trying to eat the puppies and pet the cakes on the head. It was just all wrong! And I’m right there with you on More Faster and More Furiouser too. That was a bad bad movie. Now, I haven’t seen Prime Gig. But all you have to say is VInce Vaughn and you make my worse movie list. Or worse actor list. Or worse dresser list. Or worse whatever list, I don’t discriminate when it comes to VV. Oh, and can we just ban the guy who compared Benjamin Button to Forest Gump? Not for the comparison, he was actually pretty right on with that. That how I was describing BB after I saw it. But how can you not like Forest Gump? I wish it had come out any year except 1994, so it didn’t beat out Shawshank Redemption for all those Oscars. But other than that… And for the guy who mentioned I Am Legend, Hancock was AT LEAST as bad. At least… But I don’t think this place would be complete without a mention of “The Box.” I mean, how do you take a story written by Richard Matheson, one of the great Sci-Fi/Suspence/Mystery writers, and turn it into this piece of poop? OK, there’s this button. Hey there, I just noticed the irony. Another movie about buttons on this list. And while this one is actually about half as long, it seemed like it was about FOUR TIMES LONGER to me! It gave away everything after about the first fifteen minutes, then the rest of the movie was one big anticlimax. And what was the thing about her foot? What did that have to do with anything? And the big hole in the guy’s face. Did we really need THAT to know that some alien had snatched his body? Wasn’t it obvious enough to everybody? I kept hoping it would be scary, or surprising. At least interesting. Nope. Then I started wishing that the button would just blow something up. At least it would be SOMETHING! But nope. The guy picks up the box and gives it to some other couple. And I’m a guy. I would be REALLY offended if I was female. Because the movie certainly suggested that it’s the weaker sex that’s to blame for our civilization’s downfall. The best part of the movie was watching Cameron Diaz get shot. Man that woman annoys me! Still, that’s the button movie that I would nominate! Anyway, thanks again everybody. Your comments have given me the best laugh I’ve had in a long time.
There’s probably an animated GIF that could have expressed all that.
Hm, that long ass rant just reminded me: I nominate the cinematic stain known as Cube.
Down vote for you, sir!
Long, but brilliant. And not simply because you agree with me, in much more wittily chiastic way. The thing WAS like trying to eat puppies and pet cakes – messy, unsatisfying, and far from delicious.
Hidden in that post is a nomination for “The Box,” which I second.
Welcome to the Monster House. Stay as long as you like.
Yes. Stay as long as you like jigshaun, especially if you’re gonna keep complimenting us and telling us how witty we are!
Was anyone else holding their breath and gasping by the end when they read this?
Lol Paragraphs.
This person is a monster and a half, get em a gif and a proper name tag, make sure they get ther M-2’s filt out.
I feel like the internet just found Videogum. Jigshaun is great!
You get this.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nation_shudders_at_large_block_of
Welcome to the show, Jigshaun! I like your style.
“What… does it want from us?”
I would like to nominate “Independence Day”.
Come on, man. That’s a good adventure movie. They can’t all be Bergmans and Antonionis.
THE BOX please. I would like to nominate THE BOX!
just found that someone else has mentioned this movie. good. good good.
I still prefer the title my mother gave this film: The Curious Mr. Buttons.
Am I missing the fact that Wanted has already been WMOATed? It must have been. There’s no way WOMAT could have gone on so long without including it. I just saw it last weekend and, as the kids say: “BOOM! goes the mindamite.”
But, at least Andy Dwyer got a paycheck from it. Maybe it kept him out of the pit for a while.
This is certainly the worst movie I have ever seen. If it had just been a sub par action film with minimal plot and lots of explosions it would have been tolerable or even mildly amusing, but this thing was excruciating from start to finish. The Loom of Fate bit was pretty great, though.
Wanted is a film based off a superhero/villain comic book, so I believe it is ineligible.
I love how the entire movie Wanted is just basically saying FUCK YOU to its audience constantly. The main character always says stuff like “I was pathetic and a loser, JUST LIKE YOU” and the very last thought the movie leaves you with is how his life is full of awesome badassness and adventure and then he asks you “What the fuck have you done with your life lately?”
What up with that?
That’s pretty in step with the main character in the comic- The last page of the comic is a close-up shot of the main character with the caption “This is me fucking you in the ass.”
But maybe(?) there is irony in the comic, because in that story they actually all belong to a huge league of supervillains, and Wesley(?), the main character, becomes a hardcore supervillain. He kills a shitload of innocent people, I’m pretty sure he may have even raped a couple(it’s been a while since I read it), but basically, I don’t know anyone sane who would want to be that guy. You start off relating to him to an extent at the beginning, but by that last page the story has really drained all sympathy for the character and his plight.
The comic is far from perfect, and is more popular for its sensationalism of the question “What if a couple decades ago all the supervillains spanning multiple dimensions teamed together and once and for all eradicated all the superheroes, then secretly ran the world and no one knew it?”
Then as Wesley the reader enters this world and sees a suprvillain raise through the ranks. There is no Loom of Fate, and there are a shit load of hilarious analogues for plenty of established villains and heroes. Predictably, the villains constantly backstab each other, and therein lies the conflict.
But in the film they make Webster too goody-goody to make all that alienating dialogue from the comic work properly (not that it worked all too well in the comic either)
Wait, wait, wait. THERE IS NO LOOM OF FATE IN THE COMIC BOOKS??????? Where the FUCK did they come up with that shit then?
(I was gonna revise the previous sentence to say “How the fuck did they come up with that shit then?” but I feel like the “Where” really drives home how hard my mind is blown. Wait, ‘how hard my mind is blown?” What is happening to me?)
..is what the movie Wanted says to its audience
Actually, I think that Wanted should not be nominated, with the sole reason being this gif.
Has Crash or Babel been WMOATed? Or maybe Untamed Heart. That’s one of the only movies I’ve walked out of.
i’ve definitely nominated babel before. haaaaaated it. haaaaaaaaaaaaaaated it. there were some very pretty shots for sure, but as a whole, woof.
Woof x 2.
Speaking of Babel, I nominate 21 Grams, another product of the School Of Lives Intersecting, which was dumb and plotless and they DIDN’T EVEN MENTION anything to do with 21 Grams until the last 2 minutes of the movie, and then they mentioned the title, and you know a movie is bad when it says its title in a line of dialogue.
“You’ve caught me by the Blind Side, Mr. Babel. Give me back my 21 Grams of drugs. Crash into me.” – All these movies’ gravestones
I think that’s actually the tombstone of the great philosopher David Matthews.
David J. Matthews is a wonderful songwriter. But, yes, that is most definitely his gravestone.
“Goddammit.” – Dave Matthews
I love the bit in Babel where all the Japanese people dance to Earth Wind & Fire in a techno club. Just love it, love it, love it. Pretty much everything else in this movie knows where to stick it.
This movie is like a recruiting film for NAMBLA. Whenever I hear somebody talk about how great it is (Usually someone that enjoys Anne Geddes, Robin Williams and Beanie Babies) I bring how the weird old man/young girl/old woman/young boy sexuality going on. How fucked up is it that she nurses the guy that used to be her husband, the guy she fucked that is now a baby and then he dies after she sticks him up her pussy*. Roll credits.
* How the movie really should have ended if they wanted to be accurate.
Kumail Nanjiani has something very funny to say about this movie. You should all listen to what he has to say.
This.
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/1/The-Curious-Case-of-Forrest-Gump-649781.html
I’d also like to acknowledge that this entire movie is a setup for this woman’s dying mother to finally tell her who her father was on her deathbed.
I like that it didn’t especially exploit important historical eras as backdrops to give it superflous importance. Sure, he was in rustic russia, and gay old paris, but they were just used as interesting decorative backdrops. But i guess that was hard, like ignoring an itch, so in the end they faltered and itched like crazy by placing at least the present events, completely pointlessly, in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
has anyone suggested avatar yet? its self indulgent crap and the story is a total ripoff of pocahontas/ferngully. i wouldnt consider it except for the offensive level of recognition it got this year, and all the money it made. and james cameron’s golden globe speech was so painful.
This entry should be considered in the Hunt for the Worst Worst Movie of all Time Submissions
I really hated this movie. I saw it at about the same time as I saw Rachel Getting Married, which is my girlfriend, and which succeeded in creating characters with more than one attribute.
If you saw Rachel Getting Married, do you remember Rachel’s best friend who obviously had a big problem with Anne Hathaway’s character? I could imagine her whole backstory without being told. She probably saw her friend Rachel being ignored while the family obsessed over A.H.’s lapses, recoveries, and tragedies. She probably spent a lot of nights as a sympathetic ear to Rachel, angrily wondering why the prodigal daughter was successfully able to suck up all the attention in the room, time and time again. And then she wants to waltz into the wedding and take over as maid of honor? No way. None of this is revealed, but it all makes sense. And that’s just one character. I felt like I could take just about anyone and plausibly see their lives before the film began.
Compare that to the sea captain. He has no attributes at all other than (a) he is a sea captain (b) who has tattoos. (Sorry, “is an artist,” because having tattoos makes you an artist.) What did he do before Benjamin walked into frame? Why is he a captain? I have no idea. It doesn’t matter- he’s got as much depth as a character in the Legend of Zelda who asks Link to recover his ten chickens. (And he’s one of the most important characters!)
Man, I did really like Rachel Getting Married. Lovely film.
I’m going to just say it: I like this movie.
downvote me if you want, but hey, I’m not going to lie and jump on the bandwagon to bash it.
I think it has good characters, and I remember when I saw it in theatres it didn’t feel long to me, the time flew by. I’ve seen it twice! It’s not bad. Certainly not my favourite movie of last year, but certaintly, certainly not the worst of the year.
That’s right I’m sticking up for Ben and his buttons. I respectfully disagree with Gabe and everyone else.
I’d just like to say that, while people are getting frustrated with Gabe’s “negativity”, it’s the main reason I love to tuning in to this site. Is he sarcastic? Yes. Is he negative? Yes. Can he be a bit hypocritical at time? Yes. But he makes me laugh my ass off, so I take it all with a grain of salt and let him brighten my days with snarky cynicism.
Ok, two things:
1. This should be called Interview With Forrest Gump (get it? anyone? yeah?).
2. I really hate how he leaves Cate Blanchett right before she’s about to have his kid because he doesn’t want to be a “burden” as he grows old/young (even though he clearly has more than a few good years left before he gets all young man old baby dead or whatever), so he leaves her alone to be heart-broken and a single mother (because that’s easy), then he gets to travel the world and do all sorts of enjoyable selfish things. What REALLY gets me, is that he gets to come back into her life right at the moment when he actually IS a burden and now shes old and has to take care of him, after having already raised his child all alone.
I forgot to mention that this movie is, somewhat, based on a book called The Confessions of Max Tivoli. Perhaps Gabe would like the book more than the film-version?
Has anyone mentioned that this movie won more Oscars than Ben Hur (13 to 11)? I’m too lazy to read all of the comments to check.
I want to nominate Baby On Board (2009) starring Heather Graham, Jerry O’Connell, John Corbett and featuring Lara Flynn Boyle as Roy L. “Rocky” Dennis. It’s about how Heather Graham gets pregnant (oops!) and is coincidentally creating a line of perfume specially designed for pregnant women. Oh no but her and Jerry O’Connell get into a mystery fight where neither of them explains why they are JUST SO MAD. Also, it features more fart jokes, barf jokes, and erect penises than I’ve seen in all other romantic comedies combined.
Please find it in your heart to consider Boat Trip for the WMOAT. Seriously, you want a bad one, here it is.
I would like to second durbeyfield’s nomination of Avatar.
If you want to talk about ham-handed writing and direction, Avatar is James Cameron pinning you (the audience) and proceeding to beat you about the head with a full stuffed hog strapped to each fist.
Plus, for bonus points, it all become enhanced in the 3D version, where 9 times out of 10 the beautifully-rendered scenery of Pandora is completely flat, while the terrible acting of the humans jumps out at you in THREE FRICKIN’ DEE. Which is cruel, because if you lose yourself in the moment you can feel, for just a second, that if you reached out you could actually slap these characters in the face and tell them to stop repeating the same plot points and telegraphing future plot points over and over again. Because James Cameron thinks we all have the story-following capacity of some very thick, easily distracted 5-year-olds.
(Should have mentioned: I’m new here, but I’ve gone back and read the articles on all the movies that I’ve personally seen; while I don’t agree 100% with all of them, I do think that WMOAT is genius.)