"The Butterfly Effect" is a movie I really wanted to like, really.
Movies dealing with the space-time continuum - and the idea that going back and changing something small could change everything - are typically fascinating.
The film offers some moments of true suspense and intrigue as college student Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher), who grew up plagued by blackouts and repressed memories, suddenly harnesses a genetic ability to recall what happened when he blacked out and to change the past. But in his attempts to change the past to help his loved ones avert tragedy and emotionally scarring instances, his actions always affect somebody for the worse. Every time his changes alter something for the better, somebody else he cares about or didn't factor in the equation is suddenly in poverty, sickness or worse.
That's the setup, and some of it works so well that it's painful to see the parts that are so inanely stupid.
The first act, featuring Evan and friends from elementary school through adolescence, sets the stage as young Evan's blackouts always come before something absolutely horrible happens, a situation worth repressing in the memory. Those become the problems he later tries to change with his mental powers. This portion of the film is dark, disturbing and surprisingly effective, though a bit exaggerated. The subject matter - manslaughter, molestation and other pleasant things - is a lot heavier than previews for the film let on, and it's with these early scenes that the film lures the audience in with the promise of something smart and original.
When Evan acquires his powers and begins to change the past (over and over again), he is thrown in some very interesting directions, waking up and getting a lifetime worth of new memories and then trying to find out who he has become after changing even the smallest aspect of his past.
But, after going back a few times, you start to realize that this movie is not being smart anymore. It's just throwing one preposterous situation after another at you, ditching the intelligent idea of the Chaos Theory. It's hard to milk every bit of sympathy for a character who should have realized the error of his ways the first time he went back in time. The lapses in logic are abundant, but the film does its best by explaining the casualty of its character's erratic actions with hard-to-believe motivations.
We also are expected to believe that changing one life-altering experience for the better would have a profound effect on each person in their adult life but doesn't hold any sway on the childhood experiences that were so affecting.
I wish I could blame Kutcher, as everyone and their mother seems bent on ripping him a new one in his first attempt as a dramatic lead. Kutcher is fine, despite his inability to repress the stupid faces he makes.
It's not Kutcher's fault; it's bad writing. It's the kind of story that seemed like a good idea when the writers conceived it (presumably at 5 a.m. as they exhaled a massive bong load). In better hands, this movie could have been great. Instead, it's thrilling under false pretenses and gets dumber and dumber as you think about it.
