The plot is an ill-conceived dumb-down of Donnie Darko, with none of the subtlety or interest in keeping you on your toes. Though the structure is fragmented, with key bits of information left out so as to keep you wondering what the real story is, the writing is so ham-fisted and the pacing so club-footed that there is simply no element of intrigue or surprise. Instead, there's a lot of Ashton Kutcher digging his own grave as any kind of potentially serious actor. By comparison, Kutcher makes Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls seem like a master of her craft. Kutcher plays Evan, whose frequent blackouts indicate that he's either crazy or caught in a series of time-travel episodes in which the things he changes about his past cause his various futures to be dramatically different. Obsessed with trying to rescue the Girl He Left Behind (Amy Smart), he taps into an ability to physically transport himself to key moments in his childhood … by reading his magical journals! This element is ripped off from Altered States, but is executed to a much higher degree of unintentional comedy. Each time Kutcher changes his past, he returns to the present to find that he's fixed something, but at the cost of something horrible happening elsewhere. Each horrible thing is a lazy, stock cliché: • He winds up in prison, where he is "the new guy," nervously stumbling over his prison-issued belongings, which he carries to his cell while being taunted by the hardened convicts who stand around on the upper level, pelting him with garbage; his cellmate is a Jesus-freak who offers "Stay strong"-type advice straight out of The Shawshank Redemption; the prisoners are all in race-specific gangs as they would look if Oz had been an afterschool TV show on the WB • His mother ends up with lung cancer (which we know because of her thin hair, and, oh yeah, the diagnostic paperwork at the foot of her bed, which is given a close-up) and lays forlornly on a hospital bed, as Kutcher assures her he will save her • The Girl He Left Behind ends up a waitress at the local diner, except she's clumsy, and always getting yelled at by the angry cook, despite apparently having worked there for quite a while (see also Spider-Man, and/or "Alice") • The Girl He Left Behind ends up a tough-talking crack whore, which we know from the close-up shot of her drug paraphernalia as well as her making prostitute jokes, such as saying "How's tricks? Oh, sorry, professional humor." • The rageful brother of The Girl Evan Left Behind, who was previously a murderous sociopath, becomes a clean-cut Bible-thumper with infinite kindness and compassion • Kutcher and Smart end up fraternity-boy and sorority-girl, ha ha In the worst segment, Kutcher wakes up with his arms amputated at the elbows, and his reaction is not a horrified scream, but rather a Kelso-esque "What the fuck is THIS?" I'm not sure which reaction would have been worse, to be honest. Perhaps—I say perhaps —worse than the present-day Kutcher is the 7-year-old version of him played by Logan Lerman. How do we know he is the 7-year-old Evan? Mainly because his hairstyle is the same as the present-day Evan's … a 7-year-old in 1989 with that Kelso cut? I don't think so. Lerman is terrible, especially in the scenes where Evan transports back to his childhood and confronts various demons, but using the knowledge and language of his adult self—the most embarrassing example being him taking on the man who molested him (Eric Stoltz, finally given a role worthy of his personal horribleness). Watching Lerman taunt Stoltz, calling him a "fuckbag," etc, just made me want to die. Yet even worse is Kevin G. Schmidt as the aforementioned sociopathic brother in his 13-year-old incarnation, who at one point beats the living shit out of someone at least two feet taller than him. It looks completely ridiculous, like trying to genuinely depict Hervé Villachaize viciously beating up George Clooney. The director even has the audacity to show the 13-year-old kids going to see Seven in the theater, as a means of reminding us that we are watching a movie as twisty, unpredictable, dark, and cool as Seven. Except that we are actually watching a movie as twisty, unpredictable, dark, and cool as Fatso. The Butterfly Effect is so boundlessly ridiculous, and Kutcher so palpably aware of being "Ashton Kutcher Being Serious," that I frequently wondered whether the film was actually intended to be a comedy, like some kind of gigantic practical joke. If I could journey back and change the moment I started watching it, therefore never to have seen it, even if it resulted in me awakening to find my arms amputated at the elbows, it would still be so worth it.
Review by |
