The Butterfly Effect film review

certificate_15

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

According to the concept of chaos theory, a rather vague and ill-defined phenomenon which became popular in the 1980s, the world is an utterly confounding place. If a butterfly flaps its wings in China, its most famous maxim goes, it could cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. Of course, nobody has actually proved this, but it has been food and drink to many radical scientists and thinkers, as well as providing entertainment for countless psychedelic drug-takers along the way. Such is the basis for The Butterfly Effect, created, we are worryingly informed, by the writers of Final Destination 2.

The film stars Ashton Kutcher, who is almost famous over here for being the younger lover (and soon to be husband) of Demi Moore. He also hosts the MTV Candid Camera-style show Punk'd, in which celebrities find themselves in all sorts of pickles only to discover Ashton is at the centre of it all. Kutcher's most famous big screen role to date is that of the perpetual stoner Jesse in Dude, Where's My Car?

Kutcher plays Evan Treborn, who at the opening of the film is resident in a psychiatric hospital. Evan is a troubled young man and we learn that a dark event in his past has altered his short-term memory. Through a series of flashbacks we learn that Evan and a group of childhood friends committed a terrible, if accidental, crime, and the consequences have had damaging effects on all of them. Evan's only solace is a daily diary he keeps of everything that has happened to him since, and through some mysterious power, he is literally able to jump back into his past and change events when he reads out pages from his diary and concentrates really hard.

Confused? You're likely to be, especially as the film consists of scene after scene in which Evan goes back in time and tries to change the pattern of his current life. Along the way we have plenty of disturbing scenes involving babies being blown up, a dog being burned alive in a bag, and a strange (if not welcome) appearance by Eric Stoltz as a paedophile father of one of Evan's friends.

The film-makers earnest attempts to blow your mind will more than likely result in you scratching your head, or praying that the next jump back in time will be the last - at nearly two hours it's far too long. If you really want to mess yourself up and see how all this should be done properly, then it's advisable to sidestep the cinema, take a trip to the video store and rent Jacob's Ladder instead.