Critics reviews

Very loosely inspired by a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, BUTTON uses its central metaphor with all the bludgeoning subtlety of a stalking horse, but the conceit works: this is a singularly melancholy film about aging and the crushing improbability of sustained human connection.

The complexity of Button's emotional effects stems as much from its cornball premise as from the subtle ways Fincher manipulates it to his own ends. For every predictable move the script makes, the film grows richer and deeper by frustrating our expectations of what a big Hollywood epic is supposed to do in justifying its hero's significance.

David Fincher takes us back to the grotesque spectacle of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984) and The World According to Garp (1982); although he is a more intriguing and surer director with this material than either Tony Richardson or George Roy Hill, his film demonstrates the same traps. . . . But Benjamin Button is magic realism without politics, without society – and without history.