Based loosely on a minor F. Scott Fitzgerald story, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is an anecdote stretched to would-be epic proportions. The film, with Brad Pitt, playing the title character of a man who ages backward, is about Benjamin Button, born in New Orleans towards the end of World War I. With the body of a baby, but an octogenarian's face and physiology, his horrified father abandons him on the steps of an old-age home, after his mother dies in childbirth, only to be found by Queenie (Taraji Henson), an adoring black attendant who raises little Benjamin.

As time goes by, Benjamin grows older, only he looks younger and younger as he ages. Soon he finds himself infatuated with Daisy
(Cate Blanchett), the red-headed granddaughter of a resident, who is the same age as him. But, as Benjamin grows younger with age, Daisy grows older.

As a teenager, he looks like a 60-year old and signing up with the crew of a hard-drinking tugboat captain (Jared Harris), he is seduced by an aristocratic Englishwoman (a sprightly Tilda Swinton) in a hotel in Russia. Returning to New Orleans , he reunites with Daisy, a dancer and bon vivant bohemian, and follows her to New York , then Paris . Since, by this time they look the same age, a love affair ensues, albeit with the sad realization that with time Daisy will age, while Benjamin will grow ever younger.

A cockeyed fable, where mortality is like a brooding presence, the film does not mimic the ages of man, but is the result of a chance comment Mark Twain once made, and which inspired Fitzgerald's to write his story i. e. the best parts of life are at the beginning and the worst parts are at the end.

In the end, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is really a film of love that centres round Benjamin's beloved Daisy.