David Fincher has always been an emotionally distant filmmaker. After his early films like Alien 3 and Se7en, he became one of those directors who you could sense that every shot had been storyboarded in advance. In films like The Game, Fight Club and Panic Room his technique was at the forefront of his storytelling, distractingly so because you (and he) are more interested in what he's doing with the camera than what's happening in the plot. In his new film starring Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fincher has found probably the best balance between visual showiness and simply telling the story since his first film with Pitt 13 years before, but that doesn't mean he's the right man for the job.
Benjamin Button is born as an old man, then ages backwards through his life (although why he is born as a baby-sized pensioner, grows, then goes back to being baby-sized at the end rather than becoming an adult sized baby as would surely naturally follow is never even brought up 
) as told by Caroline (Julia Ormond), who is reading Button's diary aloud to her dying mother Daisy (played by Cate Blanchett). It does Ormond (who does brilliantly with a nothing character) a great disservice to have her simply begin sentences then have Pitt's narration take over, and the structure as a whole seems forced, tacked on and pretentious. Hurricane Katrina is looming in the background but this adds nothing to the story except eliciting a reaction from people for whom that is still a sore wound.
The film is very watchable, it doesn't feel its almost 3 hour length and the reverse ageing of Pitt is fascinating throughout. If anything is the problem though, that is precisely it: it feels as if the whole point of the film is "Brad Pitt ages backwards". Ostensibly, this is a love story between two people who are ageing in different directions and end up "meeting in the middle", but in Fincher they've found the one director not suited to this kind of story. Daisy is a total cow to Benjamin for the whole time until she is the one who wants them to get together and *BANG* they do - it would be a challenge for any director to make such a relationship work romantically but the uber-cold, stand-offish Fincher never has a prayer.
Pitt is the glue that holds all of this together, when he gets younger Fincher does shoot him like it's a Hugo Boss advert at times, but it's a fine performance. Blanchett does what is required of her but has very little to do in the modern day segments, and the way they make her look young is very artificial, whereas they do make Pitt look just like he did 15 years ago. This again is sadly the whole point of the film. While it's well made and Fincher disappears as much as he can and it moves nicely ... the central story is so lacking in emotion (despite Alexandre Desplat's beautiful score doing everything possible to add to what's not there) it really is the gimmick keeping the audience's interest rather than the drama. While this may be fine first time round, this surely won't be a story that retains much of an interest on repeat viewings once the novelty has worn off. Worth seeing? Absolutely, it's a very good watch, albeit a very inconsequential one.