There’s been a considerable amount of buzz surrounding The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and its chances at winning multiple Oscars this award season. Thanks to a little bit of free time and the influx of DVD screeners flooding the net, I was able to catch the movie from the comfort of my couch. After watching the film, I’ve formed a hypothesis: F. Scott Fitzgerald turns over in his grave every time someone watches The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

For those of you that don’t know (I didn’t either until a few weeks ago), Button… is based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. Fitzgerald is knows for his ability to take a mirror and show the materialism and superficiality that our country is built upon, including his most famous work (and one considered by some as the greatest novel of the 20th century), The Great Gatsby. The short story version of Button… has a lot of the same commentary as Fitzgerald’s other works with the title character watching his social status grow as he becomes more attractive and wealthy in a story that is largely focused on material and physical gain. Of course, this is all lost on the theatrical adaptation.

For the first two hours, Benjamin Button partakes in a slew of Gumpian (as in Forrest – feel free to add to your daily vernacular) acts of happenstance that make for some compelling cinema. Human interaction in the light of World War II America is fantastically illuminated, making one wish the whole movie focused on these issues. Instead, we got treated to a great two-hour movie followed by an hour of what was nothing more than an extended Calvin Klein commercial. Once Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett reach their peak years, all they do is roll around and ga-ga eyes over one another’s hotness.

I already explained how I thought Will Smith was celebrating his own looks in his movies on the sly, but this is just blatant ego-feeding. At one point, Brad puts his arms over Blanchett, looks in the mirror and says (in an accent that is supposed to be from New Orleans but instead sounds like Colonel Sanders) “I wanna remember us just as we are now.” And how are they right now, exactly? Well, really, really, gorgeous of course! They are hot on a boat. Hot at a café. Hot painting a house and hot under the stars Sam I Am. Now admire their beauty, because lord knows they have no qualms about doing just that.

Instead of maintaining Fitzgerald’s original ideals and allegorical techniques, the movie adaptation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button only celebrates the superficiality the author condemned. Maybe the supposed love story is lost on me, but Button… is nothing more than a celebration of the main characters’ supposed physical beauty with very little substance. If you like good movies, then watch the first two hours. If you like porn without the sex, then the second half of the movie is right up your alley.