Very Robert Silverberg

Rating: 8/10 (2 February 2006)

I was actually surprised that I didn't see Robert Silverberg's name in the credits. He wrote several short stories about time travel and alternate time-lines, and one, "Needle in a Timestack" could almost have been "The Butterfly Effect" -- if Lenny was writing the story! Enough other comments have described the plot, so I'll just add that while there are probably holes in the plot (other than the first "Terminator" there are plot holes in every time-travel movie), the movie still works as an exploration of the time paradoxes.
I've never seen Punk'd or "Dude Where is my car", so I had no opinion of Ashton Kutcher and I thought he was good, you could see the changes to him after every "life reset" (it is implied that he "remembers" all of the alternative realities even after he changes them), to a certain extant he is a cypher, because the rest of his friends lives revolve around him and he is almost the victim of their actions. A really good movie, bordering on great.