The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with a Slate spoiler special podcast on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

So be forewarned if you've never listened to one of these podcasts that we will be spoiling secrets from the movie if you haven't seen it yet.

I'm here with Tanner Colby.

Hello, Tanner.

Hi, how are you?

Freelance writer, author of The Chris Barley Show.

Doer of stuff.

Knower of knowledge. And actually, we found out, I just realized today that you're the perfect

guest for this particular podcast because you're from New Orleans, Louisiana.

I am.

Which is where this movie is set and where it gets a lot of its local color and bad accents and various other. No one ever gets the accent right.

So you just give up on that.

You write that off from the beginning of the movie and you try not to care.

So Brad Pitt's accent is terrible.

And he just tries to do a Rhett Butler generic southern drawl thing.

And it's really bad, which is strange given that he's from Missouri. He's from

geographically to south. But aside from the accents, I feel like they really captured New Orleans.

Well, in general, it seems like you liked the movie more than I did. We didn't see it together.

You just saw it yesterday, and I saw it a few weeks ago. But you, I think, were quite moved by it, right?

I was. It was less moving than interesting, I think. You said that you felt

it was a little too cerebral and that it was more of a thought exercise. And I think that's okay

...