'Butterfly Effect' blacks out on the logic

Friday, January 23, 2004

By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"The Butterfly Effect" often doesn't make a lick of sense.

	'Butterfly Effect' Rating: R for violence, sexual content, language, brief drug use Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart Directors: Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber

And I'm not just talking about casting Ashton Kutcher in a dramatic role that allows him little chance to demonstrate his comedic skills and boyish charm. One of the movie's most dramatic moments can, with the wrong audience, easily produce titters instead of the desired shivers.

"Butterfly Effect" stars Kutcher as the college-age version of Evan Treborn, a boy who was raised by his mother after his father was institutionalized. As a 7-year-old and then 13-year-old, Evan experiences blackouts that wipe out his memories of disturbing incidents and he has more than his share of them.

As a psychology major in college, Evan realizes that reading journals he kept as a boy allow him to reenter the past, which he tries to alter to save the lives or destinies of his childhood friends. But every time he thinks he's tweaked the time period, he makes things worse for someone else -- or himself.

"Butterfly Effect," which takes its name from the theory about the flapping of a butterfly's wings producing weather changes far away, is a thriller with enough dark, disturbing moments (kiddie porn and prison, for starters) to make it unsuitable for young fans of "That '70s Show." Kutcher is serviceable but not strong enough in the lead, while Amy Smart, Elden Henson and William Lee Scott play his former childhood friends.

Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, who wrote this and "Final Destination 2," make their directorial debut and they obviously have no problem with putting the f-word into the mouth of a prescient child. Maybe they needed to reenter the past and allow someone more seasoned to take their admittedly fascinating concept and run with it.

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