ashton kutcher = eww

Rating: 5/10 (9 May 2006)

This was an OK movie overall. Basically elaborating on the idea that the flutter of the wings of a butterfly can cause a tsunami halfway across the world, it's in interesting study of how certain events encountered as early on as childhood can affect everything that happens to us afterward. Evan, the main character, discovers he has the strange power to look back at his old journals and go back in time to alter things that happened. Bent on preventing the suicide of one of his friends and the decline of another, he goes back to certain horrific and formative childhood events to change them, but every time different people get hurt in different ways. It goes on and on until the bittersweet ending...and I thought the concept and execution of the plot was marvelous. I've often thought, like if I hadn't done this thing years ago, how would things be different? It gives you chance to see how this might work out. It was also very well-made...not amazing direction, but what might otherwise be a long, mechanical latter part didn't drag at all. Now for the cons: I refuse to acknowledge Ashton Kutcher as an actor, first off. This isn't so bad...Winona Ryder isn't an actor either, she plays herself as Ashton does, but at least she gets the right emotion half of the time and pulls off lines naturally. Ashton is Abominable. He deserves death by firing squad. The rest of the acting was OK, nothing particularly stood out...but overall, it seemed in retrospect very calculated to have a particular effect on the audience. This is probably not a definite bad thing for most, but for me, I hate having my emotions manipulated. Movies that I tend to hail as great - The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now - cannot be contracted into one emotion or one interpretation, or a thousand. And some others, such as Taxi Driver and Dog Day Afternoon, simply defy intellectual judgement altogether. I felt the The Butterfly Effect was plotted, calculated in much the same way as The Devil's Advocate, or 187 - good movies in and of themselves, but ones that leave no room to breathe.