The Butterfly Effect (2004) - Review and Analysis by Scott Wood for Critical-Film.com

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The Butterfly Effect A film review by Scott Wood For Critical-film.com   “One flap of a butterfly 's wings on one side of the earth can cause a typhoon on the other.”   The idea stems from a Ray Bradbury story titled “A Sound of Thunder,” where a group of time travelers go back to the time of dinosaurs and accidentally kill a butterfly. When they go back to their own time, the world has changed dramatically. This should be a fun and interesting concept to explore cinematically, or otherwise. It's too bad that “The Butterfly Effect” does such an uninspiring job of its version, however. While it does somewhat well at faking its intelligence, and at times feels as though there is some real thought put into it, it fails at its most fundamental levels.   Problem One: There is no explanation as to what is really happening. Evan Treborn (Kutcher) spends his life attempting to explain blackouts he had when he was younger, and when he finally figures it out, he doesn't let us in. One would assume that it is some sort of time travel, but it is never explained how, or why, or what the reason is that Treborn can accomplish this feat at the time he does as opposed to years ago or years later. Asking the audience to accept the fact that he can travel through time without explanation as to how would have been acceptable if the film had given us something else to focus on. This on top of all the paradoxes that time travel presents us with, and all of the sudden you have too much belief that the viewer must suspend.   Problem Two: Never once does Treborn ever go back in time, and make things better. It should be assumed that if you can go back in time and do things differently, you could make the present better at least one on a while. On the contrary for “The Butterfly Effect,” which holds its plot line of ever worsening situations in such high regard, that it strangles the potential possibilities of genuine thought until they die and become standard movie fare. I am not impressed by a film that wants to be original, but ends up so easily predictable. It's like a drawn-out filler episode of “The Outer Limits…” without the camp.   Problem Three: The big problem is that there are other films on the market that explore similar subject material, but do so far better than “The Butterfly Effect.” “Donnie Darko,” the “Back to the Future” trilogy, and even the sub-par “A Sound of Thunder” are all more intelligent and successful movies.   “The Butterfly Effect” may be mildly entertaining in its own respect, and the performances of its actors are quite admirable. But this subject material obviously overmatches the writing abilities of the people who brought you “Final Destination 2.” Bess and Gruber's “Cellular” was a far better flick.   (Two Stars)   This review was provided in HTML format, as your browser is not capable of displaying flash content. To experience Critical-Film.com the way it was meant to be seen, please download the flash player from <a href="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&promoid=BIOW">Macromedia</a>.