A somber fable about the far-reaching and unforeseen consequences that ripple outwards from every act, the joint directing debut of screenwriters Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber falters under its weighty dramatic burdens.
Seven-year-old Evan Treborn (Logan Lerman) lives with his hardworking mother (Melora Walters), pines for his institutionalized dad (Callum Keith Rennie), and pals around with sensitive Lenny (Jake Kaese) and pretty Kayleigh Miller (Sarah Widdows). Kayleigh lives with her divorced father (Eric Stoltz) and delinquent brother, Tommy (Cameron Bright). Evan is subject to blackouts that frighten his mother and leave holes in his memory. As 13-year-olds, Tommy (Jesse James) instigates a prank that goes so horribly wrong that Lenny (Kevin G. Schmidt) is permanently traumatized, but Evan can't remember what happened. Later, when Evan (John Patrick Amedori) and Kayleigh (Irene Gorovaia) kiss for the first time, Tommy exacts a terrible revenge. Evan can't remember it, either. In the present day, brilliant psychology major Evan (Ashton Kutcher) is reading one of the journals he's kept since childhood when he's catapulted into a vivid waking dream of the past. He tracks down Kayleigh (Amy Smart) to compare memories, and finds her working in a diner. Their awkward encounter drives her to suicide and, convinced that what he experienced wasn't a dream, Evan tries to re-enter key traumatic junctures in his past in hopes of filling in the holes in his memory and fixing the things that went so terribly wrong.
Bress and Gruber's attempt to make a serious, spooky moral tale is ambitious, but their deeply disturbing material mixes uncomfortably with the film's time-travel conceit, which requires some serious suspension of disbelief. Kutcher's lightweight presence makes surrendering to that suspension doubly difficult. Read the complete review for The Butterfly Effect
