If you've seen the trailers you know the central premise that the movie is built around: a baby is born old and ages in reverse throughout life.

This movie has, presently, a 76% rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, so obviously this negative review is counter to the general consensus. That being the case I thought I'd detail my problems with this film.

Benjamin was born on the last day of the World War I. This date is, somehow, important. It is the extremely weak and otherwise unexplained tie to a clockmaker who made a backward-running clock to protest that war.

Stephen King has a theory about the mysterious in fiction - let it be mysterious. Explaining the mysterious can be done in ways that are interesting and entertaining, but the attempt is always risky. Usually its better to leave the mysterious unexplained. The risk did not pay off in this movie. But it was a small problem that I would have quickly forgotten were it not for the souless film that followed.

Benjamin's mother died in childbirth and his father abandoned him. He grew up in New Orleans as the adopted son of a black housekeeper. The house she and Benjamin lived in was a retirement home.

As his frail childhood passes we never see him getting hurt from attempts to play. We never see him being rejected by other children. We see little evidence of the inevitable problems of him fitting in with older people. We never see him asked about something that an old person should know that he, because he is young, doesn't know.

He takes his first steps at age 7 at a tent revival when a wide-eyed black faith-healer challenged him to get up and walk. The entire scene, including the fatal heart attack of the faith-healer, was played for laughs or whimsy or irony... or something. Whatever, it went way too far into minstrel show territory.

Benjamin meets Daisy, the supposed love of his life, when they are both chronologically young. Of course she looks like a girl and he looks like a tiny 80-year-old. By the time she is 20 he could pass for 60. They meet in the middle at about age 40 and then quickly pass each other. By the time he looks 20 she's 60.

And here's strike one: apparently true love requires that lovers be the same age. When the 20-year-old Daisy frankly invites the 60ish looking Benjamin to bed he passes. He's been in love with this girl since they were both 12 and he declines. Yeah, right.

On second thought Daisy's level of self-involvement at that time was a turn-off. But somehow I doubt that's what the filmakers were trying to do there.

The have a passionate affair in the middle. After that they get together for a single adulterous fling when she's 60 and he's apparently 20.

You'd think that this film would have something positive to say about how love can look past age. Well, apparently love can't.

Strike two is worse: the honeymoon in the middle resulted in the birth of a healthy baby girl. After the child's first birthday Benjamin abandons Daisy and the baby. Why? Apparently Benjamin is afraid he'll be a burden as he grows younger. Um... biologically he's 40. So, by the time he reverse-aged to 20, the child would be grown. Stupid.

The film tries to excuse this irresponsibility by showing Benjamin providing financially for Daisy and the child. Hey filmmakers, there's more than one way to be a deadbeat dad.

Strike three: for a guy that has this interesting problem and lived through some interesting times he had a pretty dull life. The relationship between he and his mother was supposed to be close and touching, but she had a daughter later that apparently was never told that Benjamin was her brother.

Another supposedly important relationship was a lady who taught him to play the piano. He can't remember her name and he is never really shown playing the piano so how important was that?

Then he is taken on an outing by a Pygmy man. This looks like its going somewhere, but then this "friend" ditches the young frail Benjamin far from home. This was supposedly Benjamin's happiest day. Did he learn the value of ditching people from that? Maybe so.

The 17-year-old Benjamin is taken to a brothel by the Captain of the tugboat he's working on. This taught him "the value of a dollar." Its played for laughs, but I found this cynical and disturbing.

He has an affair with a married wife of a diplomat/spy. She's an impressive lady, but what was the point? She breaks it off with a note: "It was nice to have met you."

During World War II the people around him behave heroically - his tugboat is shown sinking a U-boat. He sensibly hits the deck and manages to survive that battle, but that was the extent of his service.

Remarkably, no enterprising doctor or scientist ever takes an interest in him. To be fair he wasn't exactly broadcasting his secret to the world. But still, you'd think that the whole, "I don't want to live as a scientific curiosity" problem would have come up. They certainly hinted at that possible direction. His Pygmy friend talked about the indignity of being an exhibit in a zoo. Where were they going with that if they were not foreshadowing that same conflict for Benjamin?

The father that abandoned him reveals himself to Benjamin before dying and leaving him a button factory and a mansion. We never see Benjamin taking an interest in his inheritance. He never manufactures buttons or lives in the mansion. He eventually sells the mansion with the family portraits still inside.

He travels to Paris to see Daisy after an accident, he learns to sail, and - after abandoning Daisy and his child - he backpacks in Asia. That's about it. So, basically a do-nothing, uneventful life. That's strike three... and your out.

Well, forget baseball, because there was a fourth strike. Even in a fantasy you can stretch credibility too far. I was on-board for the whole aging in reverse thing. He's born a tiny old man. He grows taller and younger so that he looks like a full sized 70 year-old by age 18 or so. So, how would you expect him to look when he died?

Well, I expected him to look like a hyper-young full-sized Brad Pitt with dimensia.

That's not the way they went. Benjamin died as an infant - an infant-sized infant. Yeah, he grew in reverse... oh brother.

I would almost prefer a film this empty to have been a complete disaster. But, it wasn't. Pitt's acting as the old-young Benjamin was Oscar-worthy. Cate Blanchett was a great Daisy. And the film is asthetically beautiful throughout.

The special effects that allowed Pitt to play the character from the very beginning to almost the end were incredible. This film is, technically, as big a milestone as Jurassic Park. You have the perfect actor except he's too old? This is not a problem anymore. The scenes where the 40ish Pitt played 18-19 were incredibly realistic.

This is an beautiful, empty, and surprisingly cynical movie that desperately wanted to be Forest Gump. There was even a "you never know what you are going to get" line in the movie. You feel the rip-off when you hear it.

With apologies to Lloyd Bentsen, I know Forrest Gump. That movie is a favorite of mine. Benjamin Button is no Forrest Gump.