The Butterfly Effect

Well, if you're going to make a mediocre movie, you might as well make it goofy and stupid. The Butterfly Effect is certainly that, with a script that makes shockingly little sense upon close inspection. Ashton Kutcher (wading only slightly out of his sitcom/MTV persona) stars as a college student who can travel back in time by concentrating on old journal entries and change the mistakes he made as a child. But alas, minuscule changes in his past lead to bigger changes in his future, and thus begins a frantic race to try to piece his life back together. The movie doesn't really make much coherent sense, as I said, but it's so earnest in its nonsense that it's almost fun. Almost. But the dialogue is stale and cheesy, the acting runs from not-that-bad to yes-that-bad, and it's edited like a horror movie for no good reason. Ultimately, The Butterfly Effect is a failure, but not one you're likely to remember in a few months.

Rating: **