It's Not Such a Wonderful Life

Rating: 5/10 (21 April 2005)

I must say that I was surprised, after seeing this movie, to come to it's page on this website to be met with a barrage of largely positive reviews. While I can certainly see the attraction of this movie; the fact is, it simply isn't very good. The version of The Butterfly Effect that I saw was the largely more liked 'Directors Cut' version, so whether or not the theatre version is better, I don't know. The muddled plot follows Evan Treborn; a young man that suffered from black outs as a child, and has found a way to not only remember these black outs as an adult, but go back in time and change them. Which is something that has a massive effect on his current life. As you might expect, this plot opens up a number of plot holes; and that's the first thing that is wrong with this movie. If you want to make a movie about something confusing, at least make sure that everything makes sense...and if that's not possible, at least make some sort of story that could be used in conjunction with the audience's imagination to fill the plot holes. And that's only the start of The Butterfly Effect's woes.
The film's main problem is simply that it's RIDICULOUS. The whole thing comes off as being very phoney and just about every event in the film can be described as either 'over the top' or just far too convenient. The action, therefore, is just stupid and hard to fully connect with because of that. At several points in the movie, I asked myself how one guy could be so unlucky; and you will too. When you cant believe in a film's plot, that film has failed and that is what has happened to this film. Before seeing it, I thought that Ashton Kutcher might have been the film's downfall; but ironically, he's one of the best things about the movie. While his performance is far from brilliant, at least Kutcher has fun with the role and his verve helps the film to swing along. Another thing that can be credited to the film is that at least it doesn't get boring, which is something that it could well have done due to the muddled plot. However, the good aspects are sapped up by the terrible ending, which swallows both any point that the film may have had and also betrays all the confidence put into the film by the viewers up until that point. The film draws it's substance from the idea that we are products our memories and the effect that our actions can have on ours and others' lives. As you will see at the end; the movie never really knew what to do with it.