The Butterfly Effect (2004)

I have become increasingly annoyed at myself for only reviewing films that I have enjoyed. So this time I am going to give you a a film that I had to endure as a teen so that my mate could 'get off' with his then girlfriend. This necessitated me re watching this car crash of a movie and I am less than happy about it.

I hate this film as it only works if you ignore the workings of its premise and it has Aston "Dude, where's my self respect/acting ability/personality?" Kutcher in it.

The film begins, with us meeting a young version of Evan Treborne (Aston "How does he get cast?" Kutcher) who then goes through some traumatic event and blacks out. Now I understand that any teen thriller needs an edgy troubled protagonist, but even at this early stage it seems laboured, hopefully things will improve. We see Evan go through all sorts of trauma's as he grows up, each time blacking out at the key moment (could there be something in this you ask?).

Evan is taken to a psychologist, as his mother is worried he may be mental (or whatever). The psychologist recommends that young Evan keep a journal in order to improve his memory and stop him from blacking out. So he does.

We meet Evan again as a college student, with the same group of friends he has always had. He is in his room and for some reason is reading through the journals he wrote as a child. And then, WHOOSH! in a blur of low end, barely groundbreaking special effects Evan finds himself back as a teenager, in the middle (believe or not) of one of his black outs. Evan has the power to change the future by altering what has happened in his past. When he returns to the present he finds the world is very different and not for the better! So he continually goes back in time finding himself, without limbs, in jail, with stigmata and so on. Unfortunately none of this makes any sense.

In one scene he is in jail and is trying to convince his cell mate that he can travel back in time. So (rather insensibly) he travels back to when he was six (or whatever) and pierces each of his hands with two bloody great spikes. Upon returning to his cell he shows his hands (now scarred) to his (Hispanic) cell mate. I do not know where to begin. If he travels back in time he affects the whole of the future not just a single event (hence 'the butterfly effect'!) and even if you ignore this (vital) portion of the farce that is this film, there is no way he would be able to carry on a narrative from a previous time-line. Again if you choose to ignore this (and for the purposes of properly revealing this shoddy hour and a half crap-fest for what it is, we will) he would have had those scarred hands from the age of six (or whatever) and this cell mate would see no difference in the man as Evan's hands would have been like that from the day he met him. This film upsets me.

Eventually we wind up at the end of the film. After realising what a waste of space he is (Evan, not Ashton) Evan creates a time line in which he is massively peripheral to his friends and family in order to make them happy (and it works, of course). Unfortunately that is not the end of it, if you were fortunate(?) enough to see the directors cut there is a slightly different (and just agitating) conclusion to the film.

Instead of removing himself from his loved ones, Evan decides to remove himself from everyone, everywhere (by killing himself as a fetus!). Again, he can only travel back in time through the journal, so unless he was able to write (and had suitable materials) months before his motor skills had developed (or he had even left the womb!), this is a (further) impossibility unto itself. He then uses said motor skills to wrap the umbilical cord around his neck, therefore cutting air off from his lungs. Oh no wait! He isn't yet using his lungs (as he is a fetus) and all his oxygen (along with everything else a growing boy needs) is provided via the umbilical cord, another irritating moment in a film that has plenty.

I hate this film. Do not watch it. Instead recommend it to Pastor Terry Jones to burn in place of the Koran.