by Lisa Hemsley

Created on: June 15, 2010   Last Updated: June 16, 2010

It is 1918 and the place is New Orleans. A husband is rushing home to his wife who has just given birth to a baby boy, but the happiness is very short lived as the woman dies. The baby is not normal as he has the ailments of an 80 year old and has not been given long to live. The father sees the baby as a monster and leaves him on the doorstep of the nursing home.

Luckily, the baby is taken in and named Benjamin and he is given all the love and care he needs as he is believed to only have a short life span. Benjamin soon defies the Doctors as he sees his 7th Birthday and seems to be making good progress, he learns to walk and starts to have fun. Being surrounded by old people is a challenge for Ben and he longs to be like other children. Things change for Benjamin when a young girl names Daisy comes to visit her Grandmother. Daisy and Benjamin strike up a great friendship and as time goes on she notices how well Benjamin is doing and how much his body will allow hi to do.

Benjamin soon discovers that there is a life outside of the nursing home and sets off on his adventure promising Daisy that he will send her a postcard from every place that he visits. Will Benjamin have his adventure and just how much younger will his body get and will Daisy ever believe that he is aging the wrong way?

I really was very curious about this film as I had read and heard a lot about it. I have to say that after watching it, it was so much better than I was expecting it to be. The storyline is based on a novel by F Scott Fitzgerald, but as I have not read this I am unable to make any comparisons to how well or badly it has been adapted. I did find the storyline was very different to anything which I had seen before and I think this is what made it so much more enjoyable. I also found the as I was unable to predict what was going to happen to Benjamin during the middle section of the film I was eager to watch and find out.

Brad Pitt took the role of Benjamin and I found him to be excellent. I did find he was so much better in the second half of the film when he was a middle aged man as he did not have any makeup or special effects on his face and this really did make for good viewing. I did find the effects and make up which was used to make an old Benjamin was extremely good and did look so realistic. I found him to portray the part of an old man trapped in the small body to be very good and at times was quite moving.

Cate Blanchett played the role of his long term friend Daisy

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