The key things you need to know about Benjamin Button? Two hours and 46 minutes.

This film is very long. That is as in loooooong.

It is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Old FSF knew his onions when it came to stories and the pertinent word was short. Why mess with that?

That is not to say I didn’t like TCCoBB. I did. It is just that I would have liked it a lot more if it ran an hour less.

Put it this way – and I don’t think there is a need for a spoiler alert because it is well-known to be the story of a man who is born old and ages backwards till he dies as a baby – by the end I found myself thinking ‘Oh for fek’s sake, hurry up and die’. That was probably not the reaction the director was looking for.

The acting? Well Cate Blanchett was excellent, as ever. Brad Pitt? Well it’s hard to tell to be honest. When Brad was the old Benjamin all the acting was done by make-up and CGI, when he was younger all he did was look good and not say very much. Probably a wise choice.

This is the story of the absurdity of life, death and ageing. The point is that being born old and getting younger is no more absurd than the other way around for all that we accept that as the norm. The final image of the New Orleans flood flowing past the clock that had been set to go backwards is more than a tad heavy-handed. If you hadn’t got the time and tide message by that point then it had all been wasted.

The whole film was about time. Long before it got to 166 minutes, I felt it was about time it was over.

So it was that Escape to Victory went on the DVD last night during an expected evening where only the men of the house had access to the remote. It is the story of a football match between allied POWs and a German army team, the latter seeing a propaganda opportunity and the former a means of escape as the game assumes ever greater significance for both sides.

I’m not expecting Citizen Kane here, but I’d forgotten just how bad the film is. Caine is wooden at the best of times, but he really stinks here. The climax, as the players refuse an easy escape in favour of trying to overturn a 4-1 half time deficit, is so ridiculous it undermines any entertainment on offer.  You know things are not as they should be when Sylvester Stallone steals the movie as the American football player drafted in as goalkeeper at the last minute. Perhaps his generally ham acting doesn’t show quite so much amidst the work of late-70s footie stars. Having said all that, the crowd’s rendition of La Marseillaise is quite uplifting and Pele’s overhead kick is rather splendid (clearly the director thinks so too, as we are treated to slow-mos from all angles).

So, how many football stars of the time can you spot as the film progresses? A disproportionate number were Ipswich Town players at the time, the club allegedly approached by the producers to supply extras. All the players apparently refused until they saw a cast-list that included Bobby Moore and Pele, after that they were falling over themselves. Which is, coincidentally, what they spent most of the film doing too.

2 plumbs.