I actually cried when...
...a piece of a ballet performance of "If I Loved You" was featured in the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The Carousel reference was the best thing that film had going for it.
"Curious Case" is certainly a curious case. I didn't care for it--I found it plodding, episodic, and rather silly and pointless. It is VERY loosely based on a F. Scott Fitzgerald short story that he wrote at age 26 and was never considered one of the great literary works of the age.
I wonder how Bambi Linn's family and friends like seeing Louise Bigelow being portrayed on Broadway by Cate Blanchett's "Daisy."
The funniest thing that happens in the movie is when Benjamin Button enters the Majestic Theater during the pas de deux from "Louise's Ballet," which occurs maybe ten or fifteeen minutes before the closing curtain! He later tells Daisy how much he enjoyed the show! Why they show him walking into the theater at that point, instead of just sitting in the audience, begs the imagination.
Still, like you, I give the filmmakers props for the reference.