1/26/2004 » Film

'The Butterfly Effect' is like scented toilet paper: better in concept than in execution. It's 'Back to the Future' by way of 'Memento' and Jerry Springer. Ashton Kutcher channels Keanu Reeves, who went from 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure' to 'Matrix,' a teen stoner comedy actor trying to turn serious. Like Reeves, Kutcher has an extensive repertoire of expressions: 1. blank and 2. puzzled. Three if you count the white contact lenses.

The film makes you jump for the wrong reasons. Much of the film is painful to sit through, given its predilection for melodramatic 'Psycho' music surges that are totally out of place. It includes infanticide, pedophilia, rape, crucifixion, child abuse, heroin addiction, dog-roasting, ass-grabbing, and the ugliest, most fluorescent summer-orange-FroYo frat-boy clothing this side of Gamma Alpha Gamma.

But in the hands of a less robotic actor than Kutcher and a more vivacious one than Amy Smart, the script would have had potential. The story grapples with some interesting issues: nature vs. nurture, the possibility that the insane are the only sane, destiny vs. free will, jealousy, the invariants in your life if the tape were played twice.

Sadly, there are major plot holes, the end in particular doesn't make sense. And having the audience laughing hysterically during ostensibly tragic moments is never a good sign. Kutcher's psycho-clown roommate is the most endearing character in the entire film. How wrong is that?