I achieved that goal. Granted, it was neither particularly hard nor particularly impressive, but still. I was one for one this break.

I had very high expectations for this movie. David Fincher is one of my favorite directors. Brad Pitt is one of my favorite actors, or at least he is in a lot of my favorite movies (and really, what’s the difference?). F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors. How could this movie possibly be bad?

And it wasn’t. It wasn’t nearly as good as I was hoping, though. It wasn’t even as good as I was expecting it to be.

Walking out of the theater, I thought that Ben Button is what you would get if “The Notebook” and “Forrest Gump” had offspring. Granted, I liked “Forrest Gump,” and I watched “The Notebook,” but that does not mean that they should mate.

Ben Button would have been much better had it simply presented the narrative of the eponymous character’s life. If the movie had started with his birth and ended with his death (disappearance into an invisible womb?), I probably would have put it into the spot I reserved for it on my list of favorite movies.

I appreciate the clock metaphor. However, did it really need to be in the movie? I don’t think it added anything at all, and it wasn’t connected to the main plot in any tangible way. It didn’t take up much screen time, but when you’re dealing with a 168 minute run time, any trimming that can be done becomes necessary.

The other part of the movie that baffled me was the inclusion of the flash-forward Hurricane Katrina scenes. First of all, the “twist” that Julie Ormond’s character was Brad Pitt’s character’s daughter can hardly be considered a twist at all. A good twist makes the audience rethink the rest of the movie. It turns events that had previously been insignificant into significant events. It makes the audience question their interpretations of events that had already happened. It is important in the overall plot of the movie. It is not glaringly obvious.

Unfortunately for everyone involved in this movie, this “twist” was none of those. There are very few people I have spoken to about this movie to who did not guess that Ormond was Pitt’s daughter. There is no one who cared. The fact that Benjamin Button sired a child does not shed any light on his other actions. It does not develop his character. It does not make him a more sympathetic character. All it does is use up time.

The rest of the 2005 scenes only served to break up the action of the primary storyline. Did I ever care what Ormond or Cate Blanchett (whose makeup/CGI and performance was very good) had to say about what was happening in the narrative? No. It was just an awkward way to introduce a narrator who was not really necessary in the first place.

I wanted so much for this movie to be great. Mr. Fincher, you have disappointed me. That is not to say I did not like it; I did. But you could have done better. Next time, please do.