The Butterfly Effect (2004): ** out of ****
Written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber. Starring Ashton
Kutcher, Amy Smart, Elden Henson, Eric Stoltz, Ethan Suplee and Melora
Walters.
by Andy Keast
"The Butterfly Effect" is almost a fatalistic version of "Quantum Leap,"
that
TV series about the man doomed to forever travel through time, making
minor
adjustments where things had "gone wrong" in history. There's also a dash
of
"Somewhere in Time" and "Groundhog Day." Ashton Kutcher plays the
traveler,
Evan Treborn, a kid who suffers from blackouts who has discovered a way
"re-live" and change events from his past my reading old entries in his
childhood journal. The catch: every permutation is for the worst, every
time.
The house always wins. These are some of the most contrived lives the
movie
world has ever known. The tagline for the film is "Change One Thing...
Change
Everything," but a more appropriate one would be: "You can't be a winner
at
the
game of life."
The movie isn't so much about time travel but about how seemingly
insignificant
actions beget tremendous consequences. I understand that the film was
going
for this, but it's a theme that has been extrapolated before and far
better in
Kieslowski's "Red," and there is a cautionary novel by Philip K. Dick
called
*The Man in the High Castle,* set in an alternate present where Hitler has
won
the last great war and the Axis powers rule the world. The book functions
as
a
warning to those would allow madmen to tamper with history, as does Ray
Bradbury's *A Sound of Thunder,* about a time-traveler who steps on a
prehistoric butterfly, wiping out humanity. I imagine that the creators
of
"The Butterfly Effect" are counting on film's target audience to have
*not*
heard of any of these, but to instead think that "Run, Lola, Run" is
"fascinating." You get the picture. It's the kind of film that drunk and
unread college students would "reflect on" after watching it, and would
probably want as part of their DVD collection, right on the shelf next to
"The
Matrix" and "Requiem for a Dream." It's a thinking frat boy's film. Many
people I know who have seen it say they enjoyed it, albeit most of them
took
the ironic route, going in expecting an abysmal crap-a-thon and instead
being
pleasantly surprised. Is that what it takes?
But enough about the camp. The movie was marginally better than I had
imagined, but the film is not as smart about its cause-and-effect themes
as it
pretends to be. The protagonist doesn't actually travel back in time but
is
somehow able to "transport" his consciousness "into" his younger self,
which
results in scenes where the young Evan must appear to other characters as
a
victim of demonic possession or split-personality disorder. I'm positive
these
scenes were not intended to make me laugh, but they did. So, if he is
able to
change the course of events, how is he aware of the former present while
in
the
alternate one? Of course, his ability to travel back rests upon his
continuing
to keep those journals, because if he changed something that resulted in
his
not writing them, you'd have a paradox, and no movie. "Back to the
Future"
got
around this by making Marty McFly an outside observer/modifier of
space-time.
Evan's trips back are internalized, and don't obey the film's alien logic.
This material might have worked in the hands of perhaps Terry Gilliam, but
unfortunately the filmmakers are taking themselves far too seriously,
which
almost always results in the audience doing the opposite. Instead of
addressing its own paradoxes, the film settles on tired Judeo-Christian
symbolism. There seems to be a new unwritten rule with writer-directors
who
haven't thought their science-fiction films though: hide the story behind
symbols, and your audience will praise how symbolic your film is. It's
not as
heavy-handed as the "The Matrix," but it's still there. Is it any
coincidence
that Kutcher's Christ-like haircut remains unchanged from childhood? I
hear
that in the original script the character's name was Chris Treborn (if one
repositions the T, one has "christ reborn"). Could it be? Will we have
to
"watch it again to figure all the stuff out"? And of course there's the
ending, which seems to be the antithetical of "It's a Wonderful Life."
Anyone
with even a base knowledge of comparative religion should see through this
one.
au3480@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
38348
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1301646
X-RT-TitleID: 1129226
X-RT-AuthorID: 9883
X-RT-RatingText: 2/4
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