Random Movie Review- #33 "The Butterfly Effect"

Last night I watched this great movie on FX, and it reminded me of how awesome, scary, and intriguing I found it the first time I saw it when I watched it the first time. This unbelievably written, very dark film just lacks production perfection and also has some pretty weak acting, but it's still great.

The movie takes it name from the Ray Bradbury short story, "A Sound of Thunder", which deals with chaos theory, which is also called the butterfly effect, and in which a man travels back in time and accidentally kills a butterfly and ultimately changes the course of mankind.

The plot of the movie revolves around Evan Treborn (played by Ashton Kutcher for the majority of the movie) who is faced a mental condition that causes him to blackout at traumatic moments in his life. The incidents are all serious, and his ability to not remember them haunts him. Evan is best friends/lovers with Kayleigh, his neighbor (played mostly by Amy Smart), and after several dangerous and one deadly incident with her, her brother, and their other friend :enny, Evan moves away and promises Kayleigh that he'd come back for her.

Still haunted by the effect of the blackouts, Evan begins reading his journals that he kept at the advice of his psychiatrists growing up. Reading one of the entries, he finds that he could go back to the moments where he blacked out, and returns to an incident where his dog is killed by Kayleigh's brother, and is able to see the whole incident. He is also able to go back and see the deadly incident that caused him to move away and also caused their friend Lenny to become a catatonic schizophrenic. Evan then returns home to see Lenny to find that he is a still a version of his childhood self. He also goes and finds Kayleigh and starts asking her about another blackout when he was forced to be in a child pornography film with her by her abusive father. Visibly distraught, Kayleigh leaves him and later commits suicide.

Evan then begins making jumps in time to change the past so that everyone he is around has a happy life. His first jump he makes takes him back to the time of the film where he talks Kayleigh's father into leaving her alone. Kayleigh and Evan are together and both in Greek organizations in college, but her brother has become even more of a deliquent and hunts down Evan, and Evan kills him in the ensuing struggle. Evan then is put in prison.

In his second jump, Evan jumps from prison to the blackout where his dog is killed. After talking sense into George, Lenny uses a shard of pipe that Evan gave him to cut the bag open to kill George. When Evan wakes up, he is back to his normal college life with his roomate Thumper (played by Ethan Suplee- who was GREAT as a supporting actor and one of the few good acting performances), but Lenny is put in the same mental institution that his father is put in, and Kayleigh has turned into a dirty prostitute.

In his third jump, Evan jumps back to the accident that caused the death of a woman and her baby and attempts to keep it from happening, thus saving Lenny, and never forcing him to be catatonic, and never killing George. Instead, Evan is severely injured in the blast losing both arms and becoming paralyzed. George winds up saving the woman, and in turn becomes very religious. Lenny is Evan's college roomate and is with Kayleigh. Evan's mother has terminal lung cancer.

After attempting suicide and being saved by George, Evans jumps to the film blackout again in an attempt to save Kayleigh and to get rid of the dynamite as well in order to prevent the accident. Instead, he accidentally kills Kayleigh and is put in the same mental institution. It is here that Evan learns that his father, that suffered from the same condition, as able to make jumps using photo albums. Because at this point, the journal entries from any point past the film didn't exist, so he had to find another way to jump.

In a last ditch effort, Evan uses old family films to jump back to the time he met Kayleigh. He threatens her and tells her he'll kill her and her whole family if she ever comes near him. As she walks off crying, he whispers "goodbye".

However, when he wakes up, he is Lenny's college roomate, and George and Kayleigh have gone to live with their mom and have had happy lives.

The movie ends with Evan and Kayleigh running into each other in New York City several years later. They make eye contact, but Evan keeps on walking.

This movie is extremely intriguing and will keep you on the edge of your seat. It is a great script and the plot twists (many were not mentioned) make for great writing. However, the inconsistency with several aspects of the characters and the jumps, as well as very obvious production audio/visual mistakes take away from a rather great quality film.

However, the main thing wrong with this film is the lead actor. Let me stress this- THIS MOVIE WOULD BE IN MY TOP 10 FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL TIME IF ASHTON KUTCHER WAS NOT THE LEAD ACTOR!!!!! Kutcher is anything but genuine and believable as the film's hero, and it's almost laughable to see a "comedy" actor try to take such a serious role on, especially when all of his film and tv roles have been foolishness. Suplee and Amy Smart are the two bright spots in the casting, which I thought was rather poor.

However, this movie is definitely worth checking out if you are thinking person. Sit back and don't miss any details.