An entertaining Swiss-cheese of a plot, not without savor ...

Rating: 8/10 (16 September 2013)

"A flap of wings from a butterfly can provoke a hurricane thousand miles further", "The Butterfly Effect", aka the 'chaos theory' or 'domino effect' is a darling for movie buffs regardless of its scientific accuracy, probably because nobody can deny its real-life application. Maybe the smallest event have the most dramatic repercussions and maybe the greatest accomplishments we've ever done, or worst mistakes we ever committed, are just conclusions to chains of event that started with a benign fact. That's life's charm: its total and out-of-control unpredictability (except if you are blessed or cursed with Evan's power to change the past).
The character of Evan (finely played by Ashton Kutcher) personifies our fascination with time-travel stories through the eternal wish to be given second chances. And no need to question whether life is a disordered assemblage of little hazards or that the same assemblage pave the same way toward a predefined future, if the film believed in destiny, every attempt to change the future from the past would have failed. They don't always succeed though and the film offers several scenarios affecting the lives of five characters. The series start with what happens 'normally' to them: a series of incidents occurring in their childhood and teenage years, each one more dramatic than the other. They seem to be reminiscence from Evan's own memory, which explains some 'blanks' at the end of each, but don't worry; each one will be filled throughout the film.
Still, what a nightmarish journey for little Evan, a boy who endures too many traumas for one life! His father is in an institution, he takes a knife in the kitchen in front of his mother (Melora Walthers), he draws murdered prisoners in school. Each visit he makes features a disturbing episode: in his friends Tommy and Kelly's house, their father (Eric Stolz) uses them a pedophile video, and later, his own father tries to kill him, and is incidentally killed. 6 years later, the worst happens again when Tommy, who became a hooligan, lures Lenny, the fat insecure one of the group, to hide a stick of dynamite in a mailbox, which leads to a macabre (and unknown) aftermath. You think you've seen the worst, until another disaster involves the four kids, Evan's dog in a bag, and a flamed torch, forcing Evan and his mother to move out from that evil neighborhood.
Surprisingly, nothing seems to have affected Evan's life after that, but that's only because he doesn't remember what happened, hence the memory blanks trick; they put us on Evan's wavelength. And all we have, as clues, are the effects the impacts on his friends, each one turning bad. But while reading one of his old journals, he realizes he can come back in the past. We can only thank the doctor who recommended little Evan to have a journal so he can cure his memory problems, the journals highlight Evan's power to go back to every single event he wrote about, and not only he's capable to live them again, but he can change them, hence, creating a new other reality, not without damaging his brain by inserting in the memory area a new stock of archive footage, causing some intense hemorrhage. The film works both as a psychological thriller and a time travel film and I must admit it had the most exciting premise.
If you love non-linear plot lines, the film is tailor-made for you. By interfering in each event, Evan finds himself as a member of a fraternity or with a Gothic roommate, or in the best case, dating Kelly. Kelly is a waitress, a successful schoolgirl or a prostitute, Tommy is either a thug or a very religious person, and the one who takes the cake is poor Lenny, either in a mental institution, traumatized for life in his room or dating Kelly while Evan has lost his arms. That part is the most tragicomic one, as much as we feel sorry for Evan, it's irresistible to see that even that fat loser had chances to date Kelly. That's the triumph on philosophical aspect, this idea that our lives are conditioned by little hazards that could turn us either into on losers or winners. Maybe in another life, Eddie Murphy would have been the President of the United States.
So, we gotta hand it to "The Butterfly Effect", to tackle its subject with mathematical precision and provide us so many surprises. Still, there are as many holes in the plot, as in a Gruyere. The most benign one relies on the basic premise: how come all the changes only affected Evan and his friends? Why do his journals contain the same events? Now, if we assume that a simple warning to the pedophile Dad changed the future, how come stabbing his hands to make scars appear didn't prevent him to return back in jail? Wouldn't that event totally affect his future as a child? Even if we assume not, how come the scars appeared immediately? Shouldn't have then been there from the beginning instead of instantly appearing (like the cigarette burns)? "Back to the Future" was criticized as well, because of its intellectually challenging question, so this is fair game.
Anyway, the film is so fast-paced we don't have much time to figure these subtleties out. I blame the writers and directors for having collected too many material and created the same confusion out of a promising story, at the end, they didn't know what to do with it, it's just as if the film was victim of the same wideness of choices that made Evan's journey so nightmarish. And I guess this is why the writers had many alternative endings to the same story. Still, one happy ending was the best thing the film could have, seriously what were they thinking with that womb-suicide thing? Wasn't the film morbid enough to owe us a happy and satisfying ending?