Good Idea, Complicated Implementation

Rating: 6/10 (1 November 2004)

"The Butterfly Effect" is not a typical movie. With its weird story, its many and sometimes difficult to follow plot twists, its dark and depressing atmosphere, it definitely is a film which can be described as "different". But is it also good?
The answer to the above question is not easy. The idea that the "TBF" plays with is clever, that's for sure: The story is about Evan Treborn (Kutcher), a boy who faces mysterious memory black-outs when faced with unhappy events. Doctors attribute this to stress, although his mother (Walters) suspects that this might be related to his hospitalized father's mental illness. Things get really nasty though, when a mischief conducted by him, his friend Kay (Smart), her brother Tommy (Scott), and their friend Lenny (Henson), goes really awry. This event makes the life of everyone take a dramatic turn, but the problem is that Evan (and the viewer), have no clue of what happened due to a black-out he faced. Then suddenly after many years, Evan discovers that there is a way to reveal his lost memories; however, this brings some unintended and strange side-effects...
If this sounds a bit confusing, then rest assured that it is much more complicated than that; in fact, the main weakness of the film is that although it is based on a very good idea, the scenario gets too complicated and over-stretched. If it was kept a bit "lighter", then I would sure grade the movie 2 notches higher in the 10-point grade scale than the 6/10 grade I have given it.
The performances are more than satisfactory, especially if you take into account the fact that there are no grand names involved. So is the direction, despite the difficulty posed by the frequent flash-backs and twists that are required by the scenario.
In brief, the film is overall OK, but had the potential for meeting even higher expectations.