Film Review: The Butterfly Effect

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Film Review: The Butterfly Effect

This turbulent quest for identity is ideal for those seeking a deep

and eerie brain teaser with not just twists, but smart twists.

Rather like the mood of Donnie Darko but lacking real quality of its

actors it's a long course of tragedies experienced by the adolescent

Evan Trebhorn who has had a pretty tough life. All in all he has been

molested as a boy, has participated in serious teen vandalism and has

watched his dog burned to death whilst he is hit by a large wooden

plank. Like his mental father he suffers from an estranged brain

disorder that blacks-out harmful memories of significant events in his

life.

However, years later we see the matured Evan (Kutcher) who, despite

his early traumatic experiences is a double psych major, liked by

everyone- predictable? Not so when he discovers how to revisit his

past blackouts and altar the future.

As you can imagine with each time alteration comes something

unexpectedly terrible in the present, soon he is thrusting himself

into every missing moment of his childhood looking for another chance

to fiddle with history and set things right (or at least try to). Of

course the tragedies get greater and greater so it's hard to remain

serious after the third attempt from Mr. Fix It, but it's a movie

after all.

Ultimately Evan manages to blow himself apart, kill his childhood

sweetheart only to bring her back as an addict whore and give his

mother lung cancer. Oh, I almost forgot, he does manage to help one

person; the disturbed dog-murderer turned Christian who steals Evan's

perfect life.

Oddly enough, despite the drastic changes around him that painfully

flood his mind with new memories his personality, psyche and hairstyle

remain the same.

It may be said that Ashton Kutcher, like Keanu Reeves, is only capable

of playing the comical idiot from hits such as "Dude Where's My Car?"

.And it is clear that he doesn't have the emotional heft for us to

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