The Butterfly Effect Review
by Michael Dequina (mrbrown AT iname DOT com)February 2nd, 2004
_The_Butterfly_Effect_ (R) *** (out of ****)
_The_Butterfly_Effect_ could not be more aptly named, as its lead casting of Ashton Kutcher appears to have caused its own ripple effect, with many in the critical community all too eager to take easy potshots at the perennial clown's stab at a dramatic role. Neither Kutcher's performance nor Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber's film as a whole would be called perfect, but both work a lot better than one would expect.
For a while, though, some, if not all, the worst fears appear to be realized. Thanks to the omnipresent advertising, the basic premise is pretty much common knowledge: Evan Treborn (Kutcher) uses his mysterious powers to travel back in time to attempt to save his ill-fated childhood love Kayleigh Miller (Amy Smart), only to find that his quick "fixes" create unforeseen and often more undesirable results. Bress and Gruber take their sweet time getting to this point as they spend a good half hour tracing Evan, Kayleigh, her brother Tommy and their friend Lenny's rather traumatic youth together and Evan's history of blackouts. When the timeline finally makes its way to the present, the film then dives quickly into the story, allowing very little time to get used to the idea of Kutcher playing a brilliant psychology student.
Ultimately, that doesn't matter, since soon after a despondent Kayleigh, whom Evan hasn't seen in many years, kills herself, he discovers that he has the unusual (and unexplained) ability to travel back in time and inhabit his younger self--a power he uses to freely rewrite history in an attempt to save Kayleigh. But as the chaos theory that lends the film its title goes, one can't change one thing, however small, without creating a domino effect through time, and Evan finds himself, his mother (Melora Walters), Kayleigh, Tommy (played as an adult by William Lee Miller) and Lenny (played as an adult by Elden Henson) not only living wildly different lives but also being completely different people.
The numerous alternate realities give the supporting cast a chance to shine. Smart is particularly impressive, given her character undergoes the most dramatic changes and handles each incarnation convincingly. While not having as much screen time and fairly minimal dialogue, Henson makes more emotional impact than lead Kutcher. This is not to say that Kutcher isn't adequate carrying a film with a straight face, for he's hardly the disaster in a dramatic context that some have made him out to be. Kutcher is simply not the most empathetic of actors, and that is a minus since Bress and Gruber use Evan's love for Kayleigh as the film's driving force. Casting of Kutcher aside, that narrative choice is disappointing, as the writing-directing duo sometimes hint at a less tidy idea--that Evan believes his motivation to be love when in fact it's more out of a selfish need to make himself feel better about things. In fact, the film often irked me as it progressed because Evan was so obliviously self-serving (after all, did he even really *know* the woman Kayleigh grew up to be in the original timeline?). But such hints remain just that, and the romanticized and all-too-expected notion of "true love through the time stream" wins out--at one point in the form of a heart-on-sleeve Kutcher monologue, no less.
That said, what Bress and Gruber get right outweighs their sometimes clumsy dialogue and general missteps. The extended prologue ultimately works to the film's favor as it establishes the starting point history right down to the last detail, making for a clear frame of reference once the time travelling begins. Bress and Gruber have done a decent job of making the fractured stream of events fairly airtight, as most dangling issues from the early sequences set in the past are fairly well-explained by later timeline hopping. And despite its concessions to formula, the film manages to be consistently thoughtful and occasionally surprising--which, in the traditional January movie wasteland, is no small feat.
©2004 Michael Dequina
Michael Dequina
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