Movie Reviews

Time travel movies are tricky. Oftentimes in these sorts of films, you see something near the beginning, the time travel stuff happens in the middle, and then the stuff you saw at the beginning changes at the end because of the messing around with time -- and these changes are often set up in the script as "ah-hah!" or "hmm..." moments that seem like really clever and intelligently thought-out twists that make perfect sense in the context of what you've seen prior to the film's climax.

But sometimes, if you think about them enough, these twists can actually be revealed as mere plot contrivances, whose clumsiness is simply hidden behind the viewer's ignorance of where the plot is actually headed. I'm not going to say that The Butterfly Effect suffers a whole lot from doing this (if you want to see a real horrendous example, see Timeline... actually no, wait. Don't.) but I had a sneaking suspicion all the way through that the filmmakers strove to make the movie seem just a little bit smarter than it actually is.

The Butterfly Effect stars Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn ("event reborn"... get it?) who used to have strange blackouts as a child, and discovers later than he can actually 'transport' himself back in time to these blackout periods by simply reading and concentrating on entries he'd written in a journal before and after the blackouts. Apparently he can do this because of some kind of genetic thing, but it seemed a fairly silly way to explain Evan's time-jumping. Anyway, the film centres on Evan's attempts to improve his life and those of a group of childhood friends by jumping back in time and preventing a number of terrible, life-altering events. However, Evan seems to suffer from monkey-paw complex, as every improvement he makes seems to lead to some unintended horrible side effect (a couple of which are pretty goofy).

If I'm sounding down on the film, it's only because there are some parts I really didn't like, squashed in among some otherwise pretty good stuff. Kutcher surprised me with his dramatic acting, and I wouldn't be against seeing him in further serious roles. Most of the other acting is quite good too, aside from one of the younger actors who plays the role of a seriously over-written and over-the-top bully. Also, some of the time-travel contrivances weren't too bad, and were actually quite interesting.

It's a decent film if you're in the mood for a slightly-disturbing, time-travel thriller/drama starring Ashton Kutcher.