Butterfly Effect

We caught Butterfly Effect last night out in Richmond. This was a movie Leah had been really interested in seeing, so we didn’t even wait for cheap Tuesday — we paid full price.

It was a decent enough movie, I suppose, although I’m not sure I can say that I liked it — it was far too stressful to watch. The story is essentially that Evan (Ashton Kucher) suffers blackouts during a fairly traumatic childhood, and as a young adult, he figures out the cause of them (or at least how to recover them), inheriting the ability to essentially time travel from his dad (played by Callum Keith Rennie). His blackouts all corrsespond to rather traumatic events in his childhood, and every time he goes back to change something, the ripple effect is huge (hence the title. For more info, read about Chaos Theory, In particular, I recommend James Gleick’s ‘Chaos’). With each change, his ‘present’ life is drastically different, including vastly different outcomes for his friends. After a series of rather disastrous attempts to ‘fix’ things, he finally settles on one he can accept, making a small sacrifice for the greater good.

I had a hard time not seeing Kelso, Kucher’s character from That 70’s show everytime he did anything. Amy Smart, had to play a variety of different characters. While she was particularly believable as a sweet sorority girl, her turn as a junkie prostitute was less than stellar — she seemed very uncomfortable in the role, stiff & unnatural. What was well done was the matching of mannerisms between the adult actors and those who acted them as children. Most noticeably was the similarities between adult & child Evan – played by 3 actors, including Kucher, and they all looked similar and were very good at mimcing Ashton Kucher’s mannerisms.

The film was shot in Vancouver, and several notable landmarks are apparent through out, not the least of which is UBC, playing ‘State’ (didn’t say which one), the college the adult Kucher is attending.

If you like thrillers, and are willing to suffer through watching some truly horrible events, then this film is worth seeing. If like me, you’re kindof a sissy when it comes to ‘realistic’ sadism & violence, you might want to give it a miss, as it will really trouble you.

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