Why this movie is just average

Rating: 6/10 (16 June 2005)

While many people on here think this movie is 'brilliant', 'stunning' or even 'the best movie of the year', I think it's not only depressing and incoherent, but also cheap and evil in a bad way. The acting of the main characters is said to be good, but never explained. One thing is annoying, though: the actors seem to be more worried about their looks than about their acting. Well okay, perhaps the adults din't act so bad, but the kids terribly overacted and performed rather poor, stereotyped jobs. But that's not the worst, obviously.
First of all, the plot and the idea of this movie is very old and not original at all. It's a normal time-travel story in the same manner as 'The Time Machine' and 'Back to the Future' - but not that fascinating because the aspect of time traveling seems completely natural and not weird at all to all the persons in the movie. This way, the fun of 'discovering' time-traveling by the main characters is not enjoyed in this movie.
Second, the in itself always interesting idea that it's possible to change the past, is not worked-out correctly in this movie. There is always a paradox in time-traveling, and nothing can ever be completely solved, but in this movie, everything fits in the end. That's misleading and an insult to the viewer. It's also a very cheap way of making this movie 'happy ending' after all - probably for the kids watching this.
Thirdly, the movie is very depressing. Sometimes, depressing movies can unsettle you, teach you something or make you think about the sad state of the world - or at least entertain you because they're well made. But this movie actually is just a sequence of scenes that make you feel bad, that depress you and that ultimately have no other point than to make you feel bad. Sure, it's all solved in the end, but the main characters don't seem to have used the bad images to turn into better persons, so why was it necessary to show all this in the first place?
Finally, the title is badly chosen. Supposedly, the 'butterfly effect' is the effect that when a butterfly flaps its wings, it can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. However, in this movie, when something is changed in the past, only the lives of the main characters change. That's very un-butterfly-effectish, which basically says: change one thing in the past, and *everything* changes, not only the lives of the main characters. Therefore, this whole movie seems based on a wrong conception of the very theory it's trying to work out. Sloppy, to say the least.
These are some of the reasons why this movie is in my opinion at most average and can't possible receive such jubilant reviews on here. People who like this movie perhaps like it because they haven't seen any other time-travel movies, or because they like the main actors, or because they just like easy teenage-thrillers that you instantly forget after you've seen them. It's a choice, but this movie is ultimately just disappointing and leaves a pointless bad taste in your mouth.