A refreshing take on time travel

Rating: 7/10 (19 July 2004)

Time travel.....overdone to the point its almost clichÃ© in science fiction movies, television and novels. It was for that reason I approached The Butterfly Effect with skepticism, avoiding it at the theaters and only seeing the DVD edition when a friend brought it over. I must confess pleasant surprise at the quality of this movie. Instead of taking the usual sci-fi approach of trying to explain how the time travel works, trying to sound smart with talks about quantum this and that, wormholes, etc etc, we follow along the life of Evan and simply experience the time travel as he does, left with the same lack of understanding of how he exactly he can do this as he is. Rather than struggle to understand the 'why' of it, he accepts his power and struggles to use it to set straight tragic experiences from his past.
This is where the movie reaches its strong point. The scenes of Evans childhood are very dramatic, with the younger actors portraying Evan and his friends as important to the story and characters as the adult mainstream actors are. These are no mere flashbacks, they set the story for us and have us rooting for Evan to be successful in his quest to change his reality. *SPOILER* I mean, who didn't feel a tug of emotion when young Evan was helpless to save his pet dog from being burned alive? *SPOILER* And as he changes things, we see the worst of them redeemed, and the best torn apart. He can never get it right, though he comes close once changing all of his friends lives for the better, but at the price of his own. A lesser movie would have ended there, with the hero accepting his fate out of joy for his friends. But Evan cannot live with what he becomes, and shows a selfish and very human side of himself when he sacrifices what he gained for his friends for a chance to fix his own life, and out of the notion of 'getting it right'. In the end, Evan realizes he can't truly get it right, and he makes a choice that forces him to accept that fact.
Ashton Kutcher surprises me here, initially he seemed to me inappropriate for the role, but he throws himself into it and I enjoyed his performance. The movie wasn't about Ashton Kutcher, as so many movies with big name stars are only about them. The story drives the movie, and while no doubt timetravel enthusiasts will enjoy dissecting every aspect and pointing out holes, I hope they can see this movie was not about the timetravel as it was the stories that drove our hero into having to us it in the first place. A real breathe of fresh air for the genre.