Dude, where are my limbs?

Rating: 5/10 (17 February 2004)

If there was an Academy Award given to casting directors, this one would even be nominated only in a bad dream. To entrust a dark and moody character to Ashton Kutcher was an obvious mistake. To poorly direct him in such a role was the second most obvious. Normally, when someone wakes up only to discover that he is an amputee all of a sudden, it is dramatic and painful. Kutcher's expression brings to mind the sentence I used as a title of this comment. There are other, slightly less glaring examples of horrible miscasting. Is Kutcher to blame or perhaps it is the preconceived image of him that most viewers brought with them? I believe it's mostly the first. On another note, the concept and its treatment was actually fairly decent-except, of course, for the casting. Of all the individuals that Kutcher has "punk'd", the makers of "The Butterfly Effect" got it worst.