The Butterfly Effect
Review by Clint Morris
 Time-travelling movies are
renowned for their inconsistencies.
Back to the Future (1985)
supposedly has 97 errors in it, The Time Machine
(2002) has 26, Frequency (1999) has 14 mistakes and
even after only a couple of months on release folks have noticed 14
slip-ups in Timeline (2003).
One wouldn’t even want to speculate how many
gaffes there are in the latest genre addition, The Butterfly
Effect and continuity errors do seem to be a tad consistent.
But you know what? Who cares.
Who can really say this or that about
time-travelling, whether this should happen or that should happen or
whether any distinct element of it is either possible or impossible
because, well, it’s never been proved as workable.
Each filmmaker behind the above productions
is merely convening a notion of possibility – despite how questioning
some of their fabrication is.
Evan Treborn (Kutcher) has gaps in his past
caused by blackouts that occur whenever his brain doesn’t want to
remember a traumatic event. The doctors can’t find anything wrong with
his brain, but his mother (Walters) is a tad worried – after all,
Evan’s father, now in the Looney bin, experienced something similar in
his younger years.
A shrink suggests Evan start jotting down
his memories in a diary. What Evan never expected was that he’d read a
passage of his diary and be catapulted back through time.
 But in doing so, he know has
the power to right the wrongs – like try and prevent the accidental
death of a mother and child he and his friends were involved in, and
predominantly, alter the lives of the love of his life (Smart) and her
troubled, almost psychotic brother.
Unfortunately – and you’ll remember Marty
McFly having the same problem in Back to the Future II
– rectifying one event sometimes has a negative domino effect on what
precedes. But just how many times can Evan go back in time and fix
things?
Even without its blunders, The
Butterfly Effect is destined to at least receive some
critical biffo.
After all, that’s Demi Moore’s handbag and
overexposed twenty something Ashton Kutcher’s mug on the poster.
Surely, he – of comedies like Just
Married and My Boss’s Daughter – won’t
walk away with at least a couple of dints from the critic missile?
Yet despite what you think of Kutcher – and
for what it’s worth, he’s actually okay in this – even the almost tired
genre of time-travelling films, one has to commend writer-directors
Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber. They make Kutcher look all the more
better.
The Butterfly Effect is
nothing if not inspired. Very inspired, and very imaginative. It’s far
from a rip-off of earlier, similar films, instead opting for a highly
original, and slightly daring look, feel, pace and impetus. Ok, so most
of it is nonsense. The synopsis gives that away. But what it also is is
darn entertaining, something that’ll keep you glued to the screen for a
couple of solid hours.
The casting is nicely done, the effects are
credible, the story quite gripping and both cinematography and music
suitably haunting. Leave your scepticism at home and jump on board this
year’s Back to the Future. It’s a nice escape.
And after all, isn’t that what going to the
movies is all about?
4 out of 5
The Butterfly Effect
Australian release: Thursday March 11th
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz, William Lee Scott, Elden
Henson, Ethan Suplee, Melora Walters, Nathaniel Deveaux.
Director: Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber.
Website: Click here.
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