DVD Movie Rating for: Butterfly Effect

Butterfly Effect Rating 4 out of 5 stars - The Butterfly Effect is a surprisingly good movie with excellent performances and an unusual plot line.

Movie Plot of: Butterfly Effect

Evan Treborn has lost track of time. From an early age, crucial moments of his life have disappeared into a black hole of forgetting, his boyhood marred by a series of terrifying events he can’t remember. What remains is the ghost of memory and the broken lives around him--the lives of his childhood friends, Kayleigh, Lenny and Tommy. Throughout his childhood, Evan was under the care of a psychologist who encouraged him to keep a journal, detailing the events of his day-to-day life. Now in college, Evan reads from one of his journals and finds himself thrust suddenly, inexplicably back in time. He comes to realize that the notebooks he keeps under his bed are a vehicle by which he can return to the past and reclaim his memories. But these recollections only leave Evan feeling responsible for the damaged lives of his friends, most crucially that of Kayleigh, his childhood sweetheart who he continued to love into adulthood. Determined to do something now that he was incapable of doing then, Evan purposely travels back in time, his present-day mind occupying his childhood body, in an attempt to re-write history and spare his friends and loved ones these traumatic experiences.

DVD Production Details of: Butterfly Effect

Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Melora Walters

Director: Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber

Format: Color

Studio: New Line Home Entertainment
"The Butterfly Effect" DVD Release Date: July 6, 2004
"The Butterfly Effect" DVD Features:
Commentary by directors/screenwriters Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber

Includes Theatrical cut (114 mins.) and Director's cut (120 mins.) with deleted scenes and alternate ending incorporated

Beyond the Movie features: "The Science and Psychology of the Chaos Theory" documentary, "The History and Allure of Time Travel" documentary, Fact Track viewing option, deleted scenes with commentary

All-Access Pass featurettes: The Creative Process, Visual Effects, Storyboards, Trailers

DVD ROM Features: Script-to-Screen, Weblinks, Commentary Digest

Widescreen anamorphic format

DVD Easter Eggs

None

Cast of the movie: Butterfly Effect

• Ashton Kutcher .... Evan Treborn
• Melora Walters .... Andrea Treborn
• Amy Smart .... Kayleigh Miller
• Elden Henson .... Lenny Kagan
• William Lee Scott .... Tommy Miller
• John Patrick Amedori .... Evan Treborn at 13
• Irene Gorovaia .... Kayleigh Miller at 13
• Kevin Schmidt .... Lenny at 13 (as Kevin G. Schmidt)
• Jesse James .... Tommy Miller at 13
• Logan Lerman .... Evan Treborn at 7
• Sarah Widdows .... Kayleigh Miller at 7
• Jake Kaese .... Lenny Kagan at 7
• Cameron Bright .... Tommy Miller at 7
• Eric Stoltz .... Mr. Miller
• Callum Keith Rennie .... Jason
• Lorena Gale .... Mrs. Boswell
• Nathaniel DeVeaux .... Dr. Redfield
• John Tierney .... Priest
• Kendall Cross .... Mrs. Kagan
• Ted Friend .... Anchor
• John B. Lowe .... Professor Carter
• Ethan Suplee .... Thumper
• Camille Sullivan .... Cricket
• Tara Wilson .... Heidi
• Jesse Hutch .... Spencer
• Grant Thompson .... Hunter
• Sadie Lawrence .... Mrs. Halpern
• Bill Croft .... Boss
• Glenn Richards .... Pinching Customer
• Sam Easton .... Theta Chi Pledge
• Daniel Spink .... Senior Brother
• Daniel H. Arthurs .... Karl
• Kevin Durand .... Carlos
• Paul Lazenby .... Rick
• Kimani Ray Smith .... Orderly (as Kimani Smith)
• June B. Wilde .... Waitress
• Trevor Jones .... Sunnyvale Guard
• Colby Chartrand .... Teen Punk
• Shelly Schiavoni .... Mrs. Miller
• Brandy Heidrick .... Kristen
• Chapelle Jaffe .... Madame Helga
• Scott Swanson .... Obstetrician
• Kevan Ohtsji .... Anesthesiologist
• Meilani Paul .... Gesela (as Melanie Hall)
• Amy Esterle .... Gothic Co-Ed
• David Cook .... Moviegoer
• Magda Apanowicz .... Teen Punk Girl
• Garry Little .... Wedding Priest
• J. Jackson Kocela .... Evan at 3
• Andrew Olcott .... Andrea's New Husband
• Jacqueline Stewart .... Gwen (as Jacqueline J. Stewart)
• Cameron K. Smith .... Theater Patron

Photo Gallery of the movie: Butterfly Effect

Click on one of the thumbnails to see the full size high quality photos, posters and wallpapers of Butterfly Effect

Butterfly Effect

Photo Gallery of the Butterfly Effect

Reviews of the movie: Butterfly Effect

Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) is a gifted college student whose childhood was plagued by blackouts that occurred during the pivotal moments of his life. Revisiting his old journals, he finds that he is able to relive these moments, and sets out to right past wrongs. However, with each intervention, he ends up radically altering his - and his friends' - presents: the "butterfly effect" to which the film's title refers.
It's an intriguing premise, but one that this flick seems infuriatingly incapable of living up to. Alarm bells start ringing right from the off: the opening quote, explaining the titular effect, is credited not to a writer but merely to "chaos theory". Sloppy stuff, and things don't get much better thereafter. Take the fact that, in spite of altering his past, Evan is still able to remember exactly what he's done, waking-up in an unfamiliar bed with a dopey "how did I get here?" expression with each flap of that darned butterfly's wings. Shouldn't he be as oblivious as everyone around him? Maybe it's unfair to expect academic rigor from your average filmmaker, but it would've been nice to see a little more thought applied here. It's a bit like Darren Aronofsky's "Pi", whose mathematical genius fluffed even basic equations - more effort, please, people...
Such quibbles aside, the screenplay does offer a few treats, with the repercussions of Evan's interventions alternately screwing him and his circle of friends in all manner of increasingly sick ways. Having his friend Tommy pop up in one revision as a psychopath, then in another as a devout Christian, was inspired; props to Amy Smart, too, for making a convincing stab at her character Kayleigh's alternate versions - cute girlfriend, traumatized waitress, drug-addicted hooker... Would that the same could be said about Kutcher, really. Fair play to him for trying his hand at some more "heavyweight" material, but he barely gets out of first gear.
The same is true of "The Butterfly Effect"'s attempts to tackle serious issues - disability, child abuse, prostitution, animal rights... It's encouraging to see a major picture refusing to shy away from such controversial subjects, but it's hard to shirk off the nagging doubt that writers Gruber and Bress introduced them more for their shock value than to get any dialogue started. The sheer quantity of Weighty Issues vying for attention here means that nothing ever gets more than a few minutes in the spotlight. It's more a case of: "kiddy-fiddling? Check. Let's see what else we can fit in..."
All in all, "The Butterfly Effect" makes for a bit of a depressing experience, a whole that's much smaller than the sum of its parts. It may be asking too much to demand thought-provoking content, coherent scripting and a decent lead from what is - let's face it - really just a popcorn flick. But to have a film promise so much, and deliver so little? Well, it makes you wish that, like Evan, you could go back in time and offer your services for the rewrite.

The Butterfly Effect, unfortunately marketed as most notable because of a turn from idiot comedy to strong dramatic performance by Ashton Kutcher, begins with a title explaining one of the tenets of Chaos Theory, specifically that a butterfly flapping its wings starts a chain reaction of events that can result in a hurricane on the other side of the planet.

Interestingly, a theory which has almost nothing to do with this movie.

This movie is not about a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane tens of thousands of miles away, it's about a butterfly that flaps its wings, deciding to fly intself toward a deadly spiderweb or toward a safe open field of sweet flowers, and the effects that that single decision has on that same butterfly's future life, not on the weather occurrences on the other side of the planet.

Kutcher plays Evan Treborn, a kid who inherited a thinly described mental disorder from his father, who has lived most of Evan's life in a hospital for the criminally insane. The specifics of his disorder are not important, as the effects are explained by the movie. We meet Evan as a young boy, creating concerns among the school staff by drawing a picture of a knife-wielding person standing over a lot of bloody corpses when asked to draw a picture of what he wanted to be when he grew up. Grisly, yes, but the artistic ability in the drawing is stunning. It should have been more childishly drawn were it's artistic competence to garner not a single mention from the teachers so worried about it.

In order to work toward a solution to the problem, the school psychologist suggests having Evan begin to keep a journal, sort of as a way to map out his thoughts and see if they might be able to find out what happens in the periods when Evan `loses the time,' as Aaron Stampler from Primal Fear described his similar experiences. These journals later in Evan's life provide him the opportunity to sort of mentally travel through time and change occurrences that happened in order to change the disastrous future.

When I think about the change brought about by the small things that Evan goes back and changes, I'm reminded of a film released last year called Thirteen (which, at the time of this writing, I haven't seen). Parents may find themselves disturbed at how Thirteen presents how easily a perfect daughter can be turned horribly wrong by hanging out with the wrong people. Incidentally, this is where a thin version of the above-mentioned Chaos Theory comes into play in The Butterfly Effect.

The difference between a butterfly causing a hurricane by flapping its wings and the chains of events in this movie is that the butterfly flapping its wings falls victim to a fallacy of logical thinking called `post hoc, ergo prompter hoc' (`After this, therefore because of this'). Certainly an interesting theory, but one that can never be proven because no hurricane could ever be traced back to a single event that, had it never taken place, might have resulted in the absence of the hurricane. The Butterfly Effect's version is much simpler. The path of life has many forks, and different choices in life lead to different futures.

A Simpson's episode that dealt with this exact idea comes to mind. In an amusing alteration of a famous science fiction story, Homer manages to build a time machine out of something that only he could build a time machine from – a toaster. Back in the time of the dinosaurs, he accidentally squishes a bug, then travels back to the present to find the world totally transformed. Ned Flanders as the all-powerful diddly-dictator, his family extremely classy but without the existence of donuts (too much for Homer to bear, so he tragically travels back again to fix it before realizing that donuts fall from the sky like rain), they're back to normal but eat with their tongues like lizards, etc. Each time he travels back in time, he changes something and returns to the present to find things completely different. The difference in The Butterfly Effect is that the things that Evan changes affect only him and his friends, and apparently no one else.

Evan has grown up to be a productive college student, studying psychology in hopes of learning something about his troubled past. I won't go into how odd it is that he reveals deeply disturbing things about himself as well as having been forced to perform in a child pornography video and yet nothing ever came of it (maybe no one ever read his journals, just like they never noticed his obvious artistic brilliance because they were too concerned over his extensive use of the red crayon?), because the important thing is that he is later able to read through these old journal entries as a sort of portal to travel back to the time at which they were written so that he can change events that had tragic affects on the lives of him and his friends.

There are scenes in The Butterfly Effect that are genuinely scary, and the film itself has a thoroughly creepy feel throughout (not the least reason for which is a gigantic amount of hugely disturbing scenes involving the characters as children - many of which went beyond the extent necessary in order to get their point across). These are, incidentally, the reason that the film at many points becomes campy and callous, surely inspiring a good portion of the many negative reviews of the film. Little kids acting in ways that little kids are not supposed to act can be pretty funny, that's why South Park was such a huge hit, but I could certainly have done with significantly less profanity and violence from them (maybe a few less vicious death threats and one or two fewer 2X4's to the face would have been beneficial).

The logic behind the traveling back in time and the mechanisms of the switches from one reality to the next is never very clearly explained, although given the scope of the swinging from present to past and back and forth again, had it been shown it would really have been a rather trivial issue. The jumps back in time are interesting in that Evan is literally able to jump into his younger self, speaking and acting as an adult though still a young boy, quickly and efficiently changing specific events and thus instantly altering the future (although not eradicating from his own memory the alternate future that he just fixed, even though he fixed things so that they never even happened – thus enters the paradoxes always involved with time travel). There are also things that don't make sense on a logical level in the movie. Here's a question, for example - if Evan knew about what was going to happen when the lady walks over to her mailbox with her baby, why did he run up and stand right in front of it when he went back to prevent their deaths? You would think that he would have anticipated the blast, since he knew exactly when it was going to happen.

I liked The Butterfly Effect a lot more than I thought I would, I had heard a lot of bad things about it. It's strange in that it starts off with a very interesting premise, then starts to get a little rough and border at times on being campy, but ultimately comes around full circle and I found myself more impressed than I anticipated when I saw the story come around and explain why it started the way it did and what the beginning scene meant. It's one of those films that starts right in the middle (maybe because even the film doesn't understand Evan's mind), and then ultimately comes back to that point, gradually revealing the meaning of the film as a whole. Leave the kids and most of your desire to apply logic to the movies at home and it's thoroughly enjoyable.

Ashton Kutcher, best known for his role as a dimwitted goof in the U.S. television series ``That `70s Show'' and movies like ``Dude, Where's My Car?'' plays Evan, who from an early age suffers from blackouts that coincide with a series of disturbing and violent events in his childhood involving three friends, shaping all of their lives in very different ways.

Now in college, Evan's life seems to be going well but his other friends, including his childhood sweetheart Kayleigh, played by Amy Smart, aren't faring as well. He begins to revisit his painful memories, or lack thereof, and by reading his old diary entries finds a way to go back to specific moments and change the course of events with psychic abilities he apparently inherited from his father. What at first seems like an opportunity to help the girl he loves turns out to have unforeseeable consequences.

As soon as Evan changes the outcome of a crucial past event, it affects everyone's life in dramatic ways, often for the worse. Initially, each new scenario is interesting and keeps one guessing what Evan needs to change in the past to fix everything for the requisite Hollywood happy ending. But what begins as a simple act to help someone becomes a desperate attempt to fix too much. The scenarios keep coming and the results just get worse and worse, as if the filmmakers knew that each situation needed to be even grimmer than the previous to keep audiences interested.

Even Evan's father, institutionalized for having the same paranormal ability, warns his son that he can't play God. The casualness with which Evan keeps altering the past _ and of course, the future _ is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the movie.

Ashton Kutcher surprisingly shows he can carry a dramatic film but doesn't quite have the chops to handle some of the heavier moments, particularly when he lands in prison and has to hold his own with hardened convicts.

First-time directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, who wrote the sci-fi thriller ``Final Destination 2,'' try to give the bleak and depressingly real lives of the characters a sci-fi twist without trivializing the themes of sexual abuse, violence and mental illness, and nearly succeed. Evan's abilities to change the past seem almost too easy and simple a way to fix one boy's sadistic tendencies and transform a man from pedophile into loving father.