THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Review by Mike Philbin

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT - 2004 Paramount Pictures Rating: USA: R

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT is a scientific theory that claims the beating of a butterfly's wings on one side of the planet can lead to a hurricane on the opposite side.* It's your ultimate cause-and-effect mechanism, if you like. And this extreme view is certainly carried through in this riveting drama.

Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher)'s memory is all shot to shit - luckily for him (and us) a child psychologist recommended he keep a diary of daily events. Upon rereading this diary it appears that Evan can return to those pivotal moments in his (and his family's) life and change the outcome from 'good' to 'bad'. Pretty simple time travel premise, you might think. Why should I waste my DVD dollar on this?

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT is a STUNNING mind-warping cinematic experience - I love the bit where Evan has just wandered back in time to fix an error (as he sees it) and the future catches up with him in a screen-trembling near-embolism. With all the background footage based on the consequences of Evan's naive vigilante ime activity, it looks like about 27 films crammed into two hours of mind-scattering joy as Evan leaps backwards and forward between his crude time-fixing solutions. You might not be a fan of Back To The Future and other such ball-less attempts at the time-travel subgenre but this flick shies away from no taboo and heartlessly 'treats' the viewer to every impossible consequence of fate that befalls this young guy.

There's kiddie-porn, prostitution, amputees and all sorts of other nastiness presented here. It's not an easy film to watch because of the personal implication of Evan's activity to save his lineage and often the narrative conflict impacts on him in a fundamentally touching way. The most important aspect of this film for me is how it makes you THINK about your relationship to your friends and family. Who really are these alien entities you interact with on a daily basis? What if they were just a multi-mirrored reflection of your interaction with them? Like you are not only forming the future with your decisions, but you're also forming the minds and habits of your friends and family?

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
Is there really such a thing as a "Butterfly Effect"? Yep, and this movie adheres pretty well to the scientific analogy. But the Butterfly Effect, a term coined by Jacques Hadamard in 1890, is just that: an analogy used to desribe how very small things can have enormous outcomes over periods of time. It's not now, nor was it ever a theory. The Butterfly Effect is also known as the Ripple Effect and it was never meant to suggest that a butterfly in one part of the world, merely by flapping it's wings, could possibly create a storm elsewhere in the world.

Continued at Science Moment 2004/ButterflyEffect.

5 out of 5 Shriek Girls

This review copyright 2011 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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