DON'T WATCH THIS FILM! - The Butterfly Effect

Some people hate almost everything they watch. They could find fault in Citizen Kane - this didn't really do it for me, such and such wasn't very good in that scene, blah de blah de blah. I find those people a crushing bore, the kind of people who go through life with one eye scrunched in permanent disapproval. They probably write blogs critiquing the way their mother makes their Yorkshire pudding on Sundays.

I am not one of those people. I wasn't, anyway... until I watched The Butterfly Effect.

This is one of those movies that make you realise, sometimes, you can't simply go in and enjoy the ride. Sometimes you can't help but go through an entire viewing experience questioning almost everything. What hack wrote the terrible dialogue? Why does the whole film never once become interesting? Who thought it was a good idea to devote the first 25 minutes to child actors in one long flashback? And who in their right mind would cast Ashton Kutcher in anything except a cotton sack they were going to throw into the nearest ocean?

I asked myself all of these questions while watching this. And I still don't have the answers.

This could have been very good, that's what's annoying. A unique look at time travel and the idea of chaos theory - how a minute action could have repercussions that could forever alter the future - but on a small, personal scale revolving around childhood friends, rather than something like Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder - which explores a similar idea. But no. This is a plodding, poorly written, poorly directed, poorly paced, poorly acted, just poorly conceived movie across the board, with little exception. And the least said about the unbelievably ridiculous ending, the better.

It has some interesting ideas and surprisingly dark moments, but all are clusterfucked by the utter talent vacuum that is Ashton Kutcher - who if someone ever decided to remake Waiting for Godot as a tale of two planks of wood in conversation, would be perfectly cast alongside Hayden Christiensen. Sadly, Amy Smart is not much better - pretty, yes, but without better actors to play off, she gives us nothing and horribly overacts in places. Presumably to counter Kutcher, who spends the whole film looking like a bewildered man attempting to crap an anvil.

It's just nowhere near worth your time and energy and will leave you wanting Kutcher's character's ability, so you can go back and saw off your hands to prevent putting this into your DVD player and pressing play.

Someone just informed me too that there are two sequels to this. I would rather, to quote Eddie Hitler in Bottom, "watch an entire episode of Telly Addicts with sellotape over my mouth so that I had to swallow my own vomit", than watch them. And on that note... good night.