An enormously difficult concept made accessible

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2004)

I was moved by this movie in ways that few films have moved me in the past. I was disgusted, sickened, horrified, saddened, and then just when I thought that my pulse could quicken no further, shocked by an ending I did not see coming. This movie is something that anybody with an interest in what would happen if we could return to significant points in our past and change them, whether it be legitimate or simply morbid curiosity, will think twice in the future as they mumble to themselves, "I wish I would have..."
I think the most effective aspect of this film is that it tackles an enormously difficult concept, that being the desire to affect the continuum of time, something everyone has wished he could do at some point in his life, and makes it accessible to even the most lay individual. I am that lay individual. I know nothing of quantum mechanics, and I understand little of that which binds space and time. However, I have always been fascinated by the concept of the Butterfly Effect without ever knowing that there was a term for it. This movie, though I wish I could have read it in novel form, has provided perhaps the most vivid, and tragically most accurate portrayal of not only what I believe to be the outcome of tinkering with the timeline, but what happens to children when they are forced to live in a horrible environment.
As a high school Teacher, I know more than my fair share of Tommies and Kayleighs, and watching the tragedy unfold before my eyes in ways I had only imagined before was nearly more than I could bear. So much so that I felt compelled to research the movie to see if there was a novel, and what I found sickened me more than the movie itself.
I am not a disagreeable person, and I neither look for nor participate in bickering, but I must respond to what George Parker said about this movie in the hopes of helping him see beyond the jaded veil through which he seems to watch movies. Counting the number upon which he has commented, I am obviously nothing more than a rank ameteur compared to him, but I believe I have something positive to offer him, and anybody else inclined to see this movie.
The "'Unadulterated'" crap, and "huge helpings of gratuitous garbage" this movie shows is far from that. Yes, it would seem gratuitous as this appears to be the formulaic way in which Hollywood attempts to capture audiences. But this is far from the typical "oh my God, did you see that," followed by the inevitable, "gads, that movie sucked!" The "gratuitous garbage," "pedophelia, animal cruelty, sex, nudity, frat hazing, car trashing, prison fights, insane ravings, (and) countless excuses to use the 'F' word" are all, tragically, exactly what many children and adults experience, every single day. I know! I deal with these kids! I have seen it! It is sick, and it makes you want to scream until your trachea splits, but it is reality nonetheless. And though you found it to be "sensationalistic crap," that crap was there to clearly prove a point, that being the concept of the Butterfly Effect, which, after all, is what this movie was about.
So, try not to judge movies such as this simply upon the epithelial layer many "tag-line" critics analyze in order to judge films, but instead view it as an exploration into a deep concept. Try to understand that if Evan had grown in a typical, safe suburban neighborhood, where nothing bad ever happens, and Steven Spielberg could not have scripted more perfection, then the movie would have had nothing to work with, and you would have been criticizing the fact that the writing was childish, and lacking imagination.
Analyze it based upon its thesis, and whether or not it was thoroughly analyzed and explored. I believe this film did just that.