Hit and Miss

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2006)

I LOVE the concept of this movie as over-complicated as it is. Kutcher has ability to go back, as it were, and rewrite history. His focus is on beautiful neighbor Smart, with whom he was as a child a co-participant in her sick dad's kiddie porn scheme. There's a few other wackos around (more than the ordinary quota for one middle class neighborhood) that make life interesting for young Kutcher. Twist is that each time Kutcher goes back and tries to fix things, other effects from his playing with the past make things worse than they were before. I like Kutcher in the role, Smart is pretty in an intriguing way and otherwise up to the task, but there are some downsides. The movie has some extremely unpleasant scenes that I passed on, it runs too fast through certain segments, it is often (to say it mildly) very difficult to follow, and some times Kutcher's attempts to fix the past are like killing an ant with a flamethrower. But the eventual resolution of the problem, however flawed it may actually be, is satisfying and meaningful in the context of the movie and in its own way. If I could take out the really grim parts I'd give it a qualified thumbs up.