Flashbacks, Disturbing Sequences

Rating: 5/10 (13 November 2004)

"The Butterfly Effect", to my understanding, is attempting to achieve an effect of consternation, calamity, and "flash-forwarding through time", and for its credit, makes a good presentation in displaying the confusion, curiosity, and self-discovery of Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher), through some of the most gritty, dizzying, and even maddening editing to ever be approved for film. This is a troubled story about a troubled soul, seeking to alter his troubled life through somehow "rewriting his own history". Sounds quite confusing and maybe preposterous? Well, add this seemingly inane plot to the consternation of some terribly giddy editing and include some really bizarre characters such as Evan's Gothic friend Lenny (Elden Henson), and "The Butterfly Effect" is virtually nothing more than a series of constant, confusing flashbacks, brazen plot and character development (why is Evan the way he is, what is the logic behind his "unworldly epiphany"?), and a puzzling and maddening roller-coaster of editing. The purpose of Evan as a child becoming a narrator for the events at hand remains to be untold: the little boy, chronicling Evan's revisions in his journal as he reconfronts various experiences, should have merely played those experiences out, rather than analyze every tumultuous detail of his existence! This movie really offered an intriguing plot: time-warping, revising periods of blackouts and reliving and correcting certain inadequacies in life, and this would have been perfectly enjoyable entertainment, if the plot, editing, and story were coherent enough to not come across as merely disturbing and zany! Perhaps the story has a profoundly larger message that can only be conceived by the most curious and attentive of spectators who view it, yet as far as I am concerned, "The Butterfly Effect" offers little more than confusion, delirium, and one head-splitting headache... *1/2 out of ****