Not bad, but not that good either (**1/2)

Rating: 6/10 (31 January 2004)

I'm no huge fan of Ashton Kutcher, but I feel sorry for the guy lately, what with the beating he constantly gets from the press. Far too many of the reviews that I've read for "The Butterfly Effect" make mention of his oh! so! shocking! relationship with Demi Moore, which is not only beside the point, it's petty.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that Ashton Kutcher is not one of my favorite actors, but I think there are far worse out there (with greater "faults" than dating a beautiful older woman), and I give him credit for trying something darker and different in "The Butterfly Effect", even if the movie has a lot of problems.
Kutcher plays Evan Treborn, a college student who is haunted by a troubled adolescence. Many traumatic things happened to him and his friends in childhood, but he always blacked out and didn't remember anything. Now he's found that by reading his old journals he can travel back in time to the moment of those traumatic blackouts and change things, altering history. How? Don't ask me.
But the reason I more-or-less liked "The Butterfly Effect" is because I didn't look for logical answers to questions like that. I simply looked at it as what it was intended to be, which is a "Twilight Zone"-style meditation on how one small event can sometimes alter an entire life, and how sometimes when you save one person, you're only damning another. Evan keeps going further and further back in time to fix things, only to discover that by playing God, all he's doing is digging a deeper hole for himself and his friends.
It's like a cross between a Stephen King novel (because of the childhood friends who share a dark secret...or two, or three) an episode of "The Twilight Zone", and "Groundhog's Day".
I basically enjoyed the movie, but in the end there are just a few too many parts that are lame or annoying, as well as some bad dialogue, mediocre acting (Amy Smart and Elden Hensen are very good, but Kutcher is hit-and-miss), and a really dull, dreary middle section.

I believe all of us can think of a moment in our lives when, had the events been even slightly different, our entire lives would be changed. "The Butterfly Effect" doesn't really delve into that fascinating concept too deeply, but it's a moderately entertaining and occasionally even touching film. Nothing to write home about, but not that bad either.