Theatrical vs Directors Cut

Rating: 7/10 (23 October 2004)

OK, I watched this movie in the cinema earlier this year and I quite liked it.
I had heard from the critics, etc, that they didn't think it was a good movie, so I wasn't expecting much.
It's the story of a young man who has been having black outs all his life and discovers in college that he can go back to these parts of his life and change things by reading over the events in his journal. And let me tell you, this kid has had a very eventful life all in all.
Now, here we have your basic time-travel / time changing story - it was well played as a theatrical release, about the right length and the actors were good, especially the usually comical Ashton Kutcher.
Then I made the DIRE and DREADFUL mistake of watching the director's cut - which may as well be a different movie altogether as it TOTALLY SUCKS. I don't know what the director was thinking when he added the extra parts he felt needed to be in the movie - including a ludicrous visit to a crystal ball toting clairvoyant who proclaims "you have no life line" in a scene that is completely ridiculous, pointless and adds nothing to the original movie.
Then there is the ending, which is completely different to the theatrical release - in the cinema version the main character finally "gets" that he can't play God, he puts things to rights and then he gets on with his life, and lets the woman he will always love have her life. It's not the best ending, but it's tidy and it works for the audience, it doesn't leave the audience disappointed.
The director's cut made me realize that some movie directors are obviously meglomaniacal idiots, completely full of their own importance, because the revised ending is stupid beyond belief. I mean, in the movie we are expected to suspend disbelief and believe that the character can re-read his journals and go back in time to change things at those points when he had blackouts etc - we manage to do that. But to expect a person with an ACTUAL BRAIN to believe the revised ending is dumb, dumb, DUMB.
COMPLETE SPOILER for the director's cut ending - does he go back in time to stop himself from becoming friends with the girl, and therefore save them all a lot of heartache - NO - he goes back to the WOMB (yes, the fricking womb!), and makes sure he was never born in the first place. Oh yeah, that's believable, that makes sense - no it doesn't, it makes a mockery of the entire plot and expects the audience to just accept something that is so totally beyond comprehension that it cannot be accepted.
Shame on the director for having an ego the size of a small country - did he even go to film school at all, because this ending is so bad, you'd think it was a first year film student writing his first screenplay and one who didn't really know how to end it, so made a terrible rookie mistake.
Don't watch the director's cut - watch the theatrical version, it is more cohesive and you will be less irritated in the long run.
I gave this movie a 7 out of 10 - for the cinema version only.
(If I were rating the director's cut it would only get a 3 out of 10.)