Rating: 
Summary: The Butterfly Effect
Review: 1)To start off with the is purposely vague on plot details so I don't spoil the movie, which is bad enough by it's own merits.2) I had rather low expectations when I went to see it To start off with this movie dresses itself as an intellectual thriller, but it is rather simple. It relies on the ineffectual technique of throwing as many "controversial" images out at the audience as possible. Such as sexual abuse of children, the whole scaery/possesed/insane/ child killer thing, mental institutions- instability, some religious imagery, prison life, etc. The point is that they heap so many over the top images into every section of the tale that it becomes ridiculous and rather predictable. These concepts were inserted without any finess and with the whole time shift thing, you saw some portions of the movie over and over again. I know the whole concept had to do with how one persons actions can cause widespread consequences, ie - butterfly wings causing storms.... but they just went about it wrong, took it to far till it became rather melodramatic so that the emotional impact was lost. The whole time distortion, time travel.. stuff was also carried to far. After the first maybe two jaunts back I just wanted the movie to end. You (ie - the audience) already got the concept that the characters supposed to, you can usually tell what's going to happen ahead of time, and the repeptition is obnoxious, and the movie keeps going on and on. Everyone I saw the movie with just wanted the main character to die so we could just go home. Ashton Kutcher is another weak point, quality wise maybe not commercially. I understand he's looking for serious roles, but he is not the best actor on screen.... I think the child actors far outshined Mr. Kutcher who looked awkward and out of place. Most of his acting consisted of faces... kind of like greek drama with masks... They also inserted some material that had Kutcher fully reverting to his doofy personna which spoiled.. spoiled.. whatever dramtic sense he might have created for some people. All and all I felt rather dissapointed having spent five dollars to see this movie. I think a more subtle tale would have been better. They started the main characters life out as so messed up and turbulent, it kind of ruined what sense you may have had about rather insignificant things and rather large effects. The ending was rather dissapointing and gimicky. Hopefully I can spare some people from feeling like I did that I wasted my time... and I can only say... Wait for rental... I'm sure your curiosity can hold out.
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT MOVIE!
Review: This movie was great. Great acting and especially great story. This is the kind of movie that makes you re-think your life. I cannot understand at all why this would get bad reviews. It has a very strong plot that makes you care about the characters as if you were them. Although you cant directly apply this movie to your life, you can, after watching it, take a second to stop and thihnk about the descisons you make. It is a powerful movie that is worth as much as the theater is charging. I can't wait to go again.
Rating:
Summary: It made me dizzy.
Review: 'The Butterfly Effect' made me really dizzy. The ideas behind the story was cool, but there is so much going back and forth through time that I was getting dizzy and tired after a while. Somewhat worth the time and money, but just wait until it comes out on video or the cheap theaters.
Rating: 
Summary: Silent but ter fly!
Review: unpredictable, the movie made you wonder what would happen next.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, intelligent film...
Review: This movie is very well done. The problem with many time travel movies is that they take too many things for granted. They presume that changes in the past have very small effect on the overall outcome of the present and future of the world. In Back To The Future, the consequences are superficial and easily repaired. This movie, The Butterfly Effect, does it right. The writers and director created a solid piece of entertainment that challenges the mind and thrills the soul. I love every minute of it. It asks the ultimate question and goes over the ground I have been longing to explore for a long, long time. What if you could change your past and make it better? What would your present knowledge and consciousness do to the world if you knew at age ten what the effects of the next choice you make would be? How would you try to change it? Who would be hurt or healed by those actions? I love this movie. If you are one who enjoys a great piece of film, check out this fantastic film. Ashton Kutcher is a very strong actor. He proves to the world through this movie that he is much more talented than the brainless hunk he portrays on his television show. Here, he is powerful and convincing as a man who desperately wants everything to be alright. He wants to get the girl next door back into his life. He wants to save his little dog and live happily ever after. But what does he have to do to achieve this dream? How can he make life better for everyone around him? I encourage everyone to see this film. Besides the occasional nudity and frequent smoking and drug use, it shows a stark, real world that one man is striving to make better and how he must choose to do that, and follows through with the consequences of those choices. Fast-paced and intelligent, The Butterfly Effect is a powerful film.
Rating:
Summary: Not What It's Cracked Up to Be.
Review: I had seen and read previews for THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT and was really intrigued. I thought the movie would offer something along the lines of the famous Ray Bradbury story. Boy, was I ever wrong. The movie is, well it's just a movie. But it's the first time in a long time that I actually considered walking out of the theatre. The convoluted plot begins near the end of the film, then flashbacks thirteen years before in time. Ashton Kutcher's character is a child who starts suffering from blackouts and has brain bleeding, similar to his father (who lives in a mental institution). Kutcher's character soon learns that he can travel back through time by reading journals from his youth. He has to concentrate on what he is doing and he is only able to travel back in his own life and control his former self. That doesn't really make any sense and the movie doesn't either. I guess the best way to describe it is a cross between SOMEWHERE IN TIME and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. The movie doesn't really make any sense. I heard several people say near the end of the film, "I have no idea what is going on." Also, the film is such a bizarre blend, that it just left the audience confused. For instance, there were several times in the movie that were clearly meant to be serious, but not in a shocking way: several people were laughing and several people were gasping in shock. Of course, besides all the confusion, there's also the fact that the film doesn't remain true to logic. For instance, Kutcher's character goes back in time to the exact same period of his childhood at least two times. His character performs different actions all three times, which makes no sense whatsoever. As for the "big questions" this movie supposedly raises, it really doesn't ask any. It just appears that it does, kind of like a political candidate appearing to answer a question without really answering it. Just trying to write about the movie is confusing and is gives me a headache. I would recommend staying away from this film at all costs because it really is a waste of your time (the only things worthwhile in the film are Kutcher and Amy Smart and the eerie musical score). However, if you do see it, be forewarned--you won't be able to travel back and repair your "mistake".
Rating:
Summary: Such a dramatic waste, back in time?
Review: This strange movie was almost impossible to decipher as to actual or fantasy life. We are led to believe the young twenty-year-old man is reliving his past in flashbacks -- at first. He'd apparently led such a troubled, neglected life in his childhood and growing-up years it had left him in a tramatized state of insanity. This is filled with unknowns as actors (the only bright spot was Logan Lerman who reminded me of my son Zach at that age); it is so positively dark that Tim Burton or Justin LIn should have been the director. In fact, this is the American version of Better Luck Tomorrow. It is a movie of "what if's". There is no guarantee that life would be any better if we could change things. Yet, this boy uses some entries in journals covering thirteen years to try to rectify the wrongs which were done to him or he was involved in causing. Sometimes, it is reflective of the lowlife of society, with scenes in prison, college dorms, teenage pranks which exploded into criminal activity. It was always 'what if I had done this or that.' At the Park theater there in Briarville, New York, we watch a movie within a movie -- very distracting, as was that infernal necklace he wore throughout the entire film. His computer in the dorm room is never turned on, so why'd he have one? He's always hoarding the composition books he calls journals. But does he really have journals. That's the big question. The actor who portrayed Professor Carter looked like Bill Spano and Jeff Rollins combined. Those were weird characters in the bar. He always seemed to attract strange roommates (in prison it was a religious freak as his cell mate). The prison scene was a nightmare. The macabre ending in his dreams echoed his dreaming about all the bad things he'd experienced and how he'd go about changing them in several dream fantasies. Guess that's where the 'butterfly effect' came in -- flitting from one strange incidence to another. It was hard to decided whether he was on the brink of insanity or completely around the bend like his father who had died at Sunnyvale Mental Institution. Had he inherited his 'father's curse'? There was some fleeting nudity in the shower scene and plenty of crude language. No matter what life holds for a human, there is no going back -- no perfect life. In his warped mind, he returns to his past to redeem the hurts perpetrated on him. He discovers that mental illness is worse than death. This was a very disturbing movie and not pleasant to watch. I was the last one left in the screening room as the others were in a hurry to escape. It leaves you feeling dirty.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I was expecting this film to be like most "time travel" movies and be horrendous. It was surprisingly good! Evan (played by Ashton Kutcher) had a rocky childhood where he had many blackout periods and where he couldn't remember what happened. His father was in a mental institution for a similar problem (he had the blackouts as well). He had some rough times with his friends, especially with siblings Tommy and Kaylie who had an abusive pedophile father. The three of them, plus a friend named Lenny, tended to hang out together and get in trouble. A couple particular events between the four of them end up scarring them all for life. Cut to the present, Evan is a psych major at a university, Kaylie is a disturbed waitress at a diner, Tommy got out of juvenile hall and works in an auto shop and Lenny is bordering on insanity and still living with his mother. Evan confronts Kaylie and tries to find out what happened during a particular blackout where the two of them were in her father's basement making a movie, when he blacks out and wakes up without his clothes on. She is mentally disturbed by this and the next day commits suicide. Evan is distraught over this and begins to read his journals that he's kept since he was a little kid. He's reading about a particular event, then suddenly seems to be there reliving it. He wakes up shaken with a bloody nose and a new scar. He begins to realize that he can use his journals to go back to those blackout periods and can actually change what happened. Once he changes one little thing, however, the butterfly effect takes over and EVERYTHING changes. He keeps trying to change things to make everyone happy and things don't quite turn out like he hoped. I thought the acting was superb. I've never been a huge fan of Ashton Kutcher, but he did a great job in this film. The other lead characters were also great, especially Amy Smart as Kaylie. While any time travel movie will have to have some sort of fantasy element that doesn't make sense, this one tried to stay as close to the truth as possible. If you change one thing in the past, EVERYTHING changes .. and not always for the better. I also thought the conclusion to the film was phenominal. I couldn't have thought of a better way to end it without becoming cheesy and ruining the entire movie. Overall I'm giving this film 5 stars. I really enjoyed it. I was impressed with the acting, the writing, everything. It is a phenominal thriller and well worth checking out!
Rating: 
Summary: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Review: Dear Members of the RAZZIE AWARDS (the Anti-Oscars): Please take into consideration the following candidates for your next Razzie awards ceremony, honoring the worst achievements in film, acting, writing & directing for 2004: WORST PICTURE: THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT A January turkey. WORST ACTOR: Ashton Kutcher Totally miscast, totally over his head. Yes, he's got the good looks of a movie star, but (at least for now) he can't be extricated from his goofy PUNK'D persona. People were laughing at his character's reactions during scenes whose content (like the amputee awakening, the harrasment during the awful prison scenes)were no laughing mattter. He swallowed his words, i couldn't understand what he was saying through most of the movie. Wooden performance. WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Eric Stoltz Eric, once a "promising" actor, has been reduced to play roles like JLO's boyfriend in a giant-snake-on-the-rampage flick & now (apparently chosen for his normal look, but also miscast) plays Amy Smart's pedophile videographer daddy, named "George Miller" (huh? Is this a tribute of some sort?).He looks sooo scary. I'm so afraid. WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Melora Walters Obviously the filmmakers saw her wretched turn as the tormented daughter in MAGNOLIA & cast her here as a total wretch, Ashton's mother. This woman has a psycho husband in a ward, an amnesiac, knife wielding kid, fatally deteriorating health, pubescent serial killers for neighbors, etc. and the only thing she can do thru all this is MOPE. Reminds me of the Mink Stole character in John Water's DESPERATE LIVING but at least Mink started fighting back 10 min. into that movie & gave a performance that should've won an Oscar. I mean, i wanted Ashton's mother to stop the pretzel plot at some point & start screaming: "Am I in HELL?!!" I'm very tempted to nominate the kid actors' who played the principal characters as children, but it's not their fault. The bad lines & coarse language they recite was put in their mouths by... WORST SCREENPLAY: THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT A premise of time travel that is so over-used in the space of 2 hours, it only induces vertigo or inertia on the movie viewer. Tortured animals, child porn, child strangulation, exploding babies, cinema lobby maulings, prison rape, prison sex, prison brawls, full frontal female nudity- but not cute Ashton's, sorry guys- campus dorm goth sex in a school campus where everybody looks perfect except the big fat spikey haired goth guy, pre teen serial killer, burning dogs, fatal head hammerings for aggresive asylum inmates, etc. Don't get me wrong, i am all for exploitation movies, but why include all of these elements & then treat them in such a morose, earnest manner? WORST DIRECTORS: Guys, why didn't you just make FINAL DESTINATION III ? Do you really think you are the next David Fincher (saw the SE7EN poster proudly displayed in your movie)? The only actor to emerge unscathed from this wreck is Amy Smart. She has to play several variatons of her role & she is honest in all, does whatever she can with what she was given. Unfortunately she even has to play a scarred, skanky druggie prostitute in one scene, but because she's so beautiful & has such a good body this is not convincing at all...
Rating:
Summary: Greatest Movie Ever seen
Review: Before, i would never think that Ashton kutcher could be that good if he played in a serious movie, but now that i saw the butterly effect, i thought that he's a really good actor. This guys sometimes may act fullishly during his "PUNKD" shows, but he really knows how to act. I would really recommend everyone to go and see the movie, awsome and greatest thing i've ever seen. Waiting for the DVD to come out for me to buy it...
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