Don't Pay Any Attention to the Critics on This One

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2004)

The reviews of this movie provide more evidence that critics have lost touch with what is entertaining to the general movie-going audience. The reviews in my hometown paper gave Butterfly Effect a "D+" and Lost in Translation an "A". Did this critic actually see the same movies that I did? Lost in Translation, which has already been awarded a Golden Globe by the Hollywood foreign press, is so BORING that you can hardly sit through it. Butterfly Effect, on the other hand, grabs you in the first five minutes and never lets go. This is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, especially (but not only) for science fiction buffs. It is one of those movies like Beautiful Mind, Fight Club, or Memento that will give you plenty to talk about after you see it. The critics seem to dislike this movie either because (a) they don't like Ashton Kutcher-actually he does a creditable job of acting, or (b) they think the movie is too violent-it actually has very little graphic violence and is no more disturbing than Mystic River, which critics LOVE, or (c) they think there are holes in the plot. As for this last criticism, virtually every action or science fiction movie has holes in the plot. If critics like a movie, they just ignore them. The bottom line is that the current IMDB rating of 7.1 makes a lot more sense than the average movie critic rating of 4.8 (from www.rottentomatoes.com).