One Big Butterfly!!

Rating: 6/10 (26 June 2005)

I found "The Butterfly Effect" to be a pretty good movie for the most part. I saw nothing wrong with the acting and had no preconceived notions about Ashton Kutchner to poison my view (have never seen the Dude, Where's My ... movies). He played Evan well given how one would react to these events if they were to occur to one in real life.
The storyline was good and the powers that be brought the events together well, for the most part. The movie kept me interested throughout, although the mysterious events (blackout moments of Evan's childhood that are not shown to the viewer), while well hinted at before and after the blacked-out portion, were not handled well. Let me elaborate. Evan's friends would not tell him what had actually happened during these periods (for one reason or another). This, I felt, was a downfall of the storytellers. While it supposedly produced the effect on the viewer in wanting to know what happened, it left in me a feeling of unbelievability in the plot (somewhat).
As to what the Butterfly Effect is and Chaos Theory in general, note the following quote: "The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does. (Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)".
Chaos Theory can be explained using the Butterfly Effect but it's relation to the movie is in name only. I say this because the wing flaps (childhood events in the movie) are HUGE events in anybody's childhood. Changing these events would, of course, have a huge impact on any child's later life. So, this butterfly is one whopping big one.
The movie has some inexplicable events and doesn't tie everything up neatly for us, the viewer. This is a good thing in that it leaves them open for discussion as to what there meaning is. This is bad in that the lesser-thinking viewers may be left scratching their heads and disliking the movie because of it.
It all relates to the idea of time-travel and what happens in the original time-line. Will it, in fact, be affected by the subsequent time travel events? I don't want to get into the specific details as it would give spoilers. I can only say that these are the things that one is left pondering.