For all that it’s got going for it — as A-list a cast as you’d get, with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the mix, and a brilliant director behind behind the camera in David Fincher — “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” also has a lot going against it — that title, for one. Remember “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward John Ford”? No? Well, yeah, that’s because everyone thought the title was overly pretentious, so no one bothered to go see it, even though the movie was just brilliant stuff. It’s going to be the same with “Benjamin Button”, as great as the trailer makes it out to be.

Here’s the film’s really strange, but impossibly curious premise: “Tells the story of Benjamin Button, a man who starts aging backwards with bizarre consequences.” Wow. Now that’s something you don’t read everyday.

Speaking of the trailer, it’s since hit YouTube in phone cell form, having been snapped in front of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. It looks really, really good, but again, change the title, guys! It may have sounded just fine in 1922 when F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the short story, but this is 2008.

Benjamin and his case exposes themselves December 19, 2008.