Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz, Ethan Suplee
Directed By: Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber
Released: 01.23.04
Jon and I went to see this tonight. Despite what his sister told us, we both thought that it was an excellent movie. I would watch, and probably enjoy any movie with the subject of time travel. It is a concept that some theoretical physicists have spent their lives trying to understand. So it's no surprise that this movie has more holes in it than a dartboard. Although, The Butterfly Effect is an enjoyable film, holes and all.
From his child years through his early teens, Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) blacks-out whenever something of great stress happens. Since his father, who had the same condition as a kid, now resides in a home with padded walls, Evan's mum is more than a little worried. She takes the advice of a psychiatrist and has Evan keep a journal. When college-aged Evan decides to read some of the entries he wrote as a kid, he realizes that he can go back in time to the moment of his blackouts. Although he leaps (for all of you Quantum Leap fans) into his younger body, he has the knowledge of his twenty-one-year-old self and he can put right what once went wrong.
What went wrong? The pedophilic father of his childhood girlfriend, Kaylie (Amy Smart), uses them to make a pornographic movie; Kaylie's sychopathic brother, Tommy, kidnaps Evan's dog and sets it on fire; a prank goes wrong and kills a mother and her baby. He has plenty of regrets to choose from. Each time Evan changes the past, he wakes up to a different and not always pleasant future. Inevitably, he has to keep making changes until he gets it right. Whenever he makes a change, his mind is flooded with new memories from this new reality, and the old memories apear to fade, although it seems like he is still aware of each different reality.
Like most people, I scoffed when I heard Kutcher was going to play a serious role, but his performance wasn't too shabby. What made him refreshing to watch, and perhaps seem like a better actor than he is, is that he rarely smiled. It's nearly impossible to turn on the television or walk through a checkout line without seeing his Joker-like grin. If he reminded us of Kelso or himself on Punk'd for even a minute, The Butterfly Effect would have been unbearable.
Since sci-fi movie scripts are not rock hard science, there are going to be some gaps. For example, the writers have chosen to state that humans are solely the product of their actions. It's this assumption that has Tommy an animal torturer in one scenario and a well adjusted kid in another. The same goes for Kaylie. In one future, she is a sorority girl and in another, she is a filthy whore in the city. Obviously, the movie wouldn't have been interesting if Evan's alterations led to insignificant changes, so these gaps are acceptable.
Ultimately, the most gratifying thing about The Butterfly Effect is leaving the theater. In less than two hours, the film throws out enough cause and effect premises and potential paradoxes that as Jon and I watched the credits roll, every sentence started with, "Yeah, but what if..."
Final Analysis:
5
(see ratings guide here.)