The Butterfly Effect

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Rating: B+

Children shouldn't play with dynamite.

This film serves as a textbook example of why you shouldn't walk out in the middle of bad movies. You never know when you might be cheating yourself out of witnessing a second-half comeback. Granted, it doesn't happen often, but every once in a while you may be pleasantly surprised. After a clumsy beginning, and some cheapo shock editing stolen from bottom drawer horror movies, The Butterfly Effect looked to be on life support and headed for the scrapheap of cinematic misfires. Then, gradually, it begins making sense in its own strange sort of way, and we begin to realize there are some interesting ideas going on here. It also becomes clear that the filmmakers recognize the dark humor in some of the absurd situations that develop, such that we stop laughing derisively at the film and instead start laughing with it.

Ashton Kutcher plays a troubled young man with the strange habit of blacking out during traumatic events. The first sign everything's not hunky-dory in young Ashton's life occurs when his elementary school teacher instructs the class to make a picture of what they want to be when they grow up, and he draws a knife-wielding homicidal maniac. Proving the fallacy that in this country you can be anything you want to be, next thing we know poor Ashton's having his head examined, and the concerned doctor recommends to his mother that Ashton start keeping a journal of his daily activities. We learn later he's inherited from his father the strange ability to regress back to previous times in his life and change those events, such that when he reawakens in the present, the current situation reflects those changes. And for some reason never really explained, he needs to be reading his journals to successfully regress back.

Hence, we have the "butterfly effect," where a small change in the past brings about large (and unforeseen) changes in the present, similar to the "initial value problem" of chaos theory where the slight air disturbance from the flapping of a butterfly ends up resulting in a hurricane somewhere down the line. I can't resist pointing out The Simpsons did a hilarious take-off on this premise in one of their Halloween specials. (I also can't resist pointing out that, yes, I recognize the filmmakers are mistakenly conflating two separate concepts here. The "butterfly effect" of chaos theory is technically not the same as the time travel effect. Perhaps the confusion arose because it's the death of a butterfly which brings about sweeping changes in the future in Ray Bradbury's similarly themed A Sound of Thunder.)

As you might guess, Kutcher's meddling with the past produces unwanted results, causing him to return to events gone by over and over again in the hopes his latest effort will truly set matters straight. It's here, once we finally understand what's going on, that the movie shines. There are snippets of humor and irony, such as when Kutcher wakes up to find he's now the frat boy type he previously loathed, and another time when he abruptly ends his latest effort with a dismissive, "Well, that didn't work." But more impressively, the film delves into the various upward and downward paths taken by the lives of Kutcher and his friends as a result of each "adjustment" he attempts. Seeing the contrast in the life of his girlfriend Amy Smart, in one reality a beautiful sorority queen and another a low price drug-addicted hooker, sure makes one reflect on how people end up in the situations they find themselves in. In another reality, Kutcher's friends are all leading happy lives, but his own is miserable. Should he go back and change things once more, or sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of those he loves? I won't give away the answer, except to say the film deals with the question in an honest and straightforward manner.

Ultimately, the film's good points surpass its bad. Still, I couldn't help wishing its early clunkiness (and an unnecessary prison sequence where every jailhouse cliché ever committed to celluloid is shamelessly paraded onstage one after another) had been replaced with a better crafted approach to the story. Kutcher's inherited "gift" is really just an ultra-convenient plot device to develop the philosophical issues the filmmakers wish to explore, and some viewers may feel shortchanged by the sloppy way in which it's handled. The ideas are there, but the technique could use some polishing. At least the Nazis didn't return to power, and in time travel movies that's always something to be thankful for.