Pushy, ugly disenfranchised youth flick disguised as a thriller...

Rating: 1/10 (24 April 2009)

Young boy with a perplexing, unexplained medical condition--blacking out at crucial points in his life, only to wake up later confused about what has transpired--grows into a rambunctious college student proud that he hasn't had a black-out in seven years (I would think the fact he has avoided jail-time after his run-ins with delinquency would count for much more). After re-reading his childhood journals, he finds he has the ability to go back in time and change the past, which gets him into more trouble. Written and directed by J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress, "The Butterfly Effect" is a supremely crass, supremely empty movie. It wants to be audacious and button-pushing, but for whom? Disenfranchised, multiplex kids with bad manners? It presents its supernatural hook only to dress up a much more familiar issue: why unsupervised, anti-social teens turn to violence. In the lead, Ashton Kutcher, also an executive producer, walks through the picture hunched over, rolling his eyes; if its possible that the movie represents anything--such as, say, a lobotomized society of young people--Kutcher's non-acting does nothing to give us hope. Kutcher is not rebellious, nor alienated, nor intrinsically smart. He's not a funny wise-ass. His vacuousness is used for guilt--not shame, just boring old guilt--and yet his expression barely changes in between ghastly episodes. The film is targeted at audiences of the lowest common denominator (much like the characters depicted on-screen). They will surely praise it...to put the movie down would be admitting self-defeat. NO STARS from ****