Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Some of you seem to think I was overly stereotypical in my introduction of Irish-Man’s last batch of reviews. I was kidding, folks. Irish-Man is actually a perfectly normal guy who doesn’t wear a leprachaun costume and who doesn’t eat Lucky Charms and who doesn’t drink more than his metric weight each day. He does, however, have a brogue so thick that he has to be subtitled even when speaking English.
He also managed to sneak into a screening of THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT. I talked with a friend last week after the insanely angry review of the film showed up here, and he talked to me about the script, which he admired because of how it tried to play dark. I’m all for taking risks, but the reactions so far seem to be suggesting that whatever goal the filmmakers were aiming for, they failed to connect. Check this out...
Hello everyone, top o’ the morning to you. Irish-Man here with another review, this time for “The Butterfly Effect.” I saw this last week and haven’t been able to get myself to write about it until now. Anyway, here goes:
Imagine you won a free trip to Disneyland, and it’s even catered! Pretty cool, right? Well, you arrive early and the first half of the day consists of listening to a motivational speaker. Then lunch is served, and it’s cold sandwiches. Then you are free to roam Disneyland, but the only place open is ToonTown. Then you have to leave early. So there you go. How did you enjoy your free day at Disneyland?
That was how I felt after this movie. I went because it was free and the premise sounded really cool. A time-jumping, memory-shifting, alternate future thriller. Well, technically that was what I got, but just like the Disneyland scenario, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. It was a good idea with horrible execution.
The movie stars Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, and various other nobodies, although Elden Henson and Ethan Suplee are nice supporting characters. While I’m talking about the cast, I want to say that Kutcher’s mom is terrible. Usually I can shrug off mediocre acting, but she was utterly unconvincing in what should have been an easy role. It was like they cast the producer’s neighbor because she watched his dog while he was out of town and he owed her a favor. Surprisingly, Ashton isn’t bad, though it’s hard not to think of Kelso, despite the beard he wears as an obvious “disguise.” The movie starts with Ashton’s character’s troubled childhood, which includes blackouts where he can’t remember anything. It later cuts to him at college, where he seems relatively normal and well-adjusted now. But strange things start to happen where he flashes back to his childhood. Soon he discovers he can revisit those blacked-out periods and change his actions in the past, which alters his future. But none of them work out exactly right, and he begins the process all over again. From there, it’s like a race to see which alternate future he ends up with.
Like I said, it sounds like a pretty interesting idea.
However, it quickly decides it would rather wallow in shocking imagery that serves no purpose. The movie features child porn, child abuse, animal cruelty, kids stabbing other kids, children smoking and cursing, prison rape, etc. Oh, and all the kids? They’re actual kids, not Ashton Kutcher playing a teenager. Literally 8 and 13-year olds. Now before you Talkbackers accuse me of being overly sensitive, I’ll have you know, I love movies like The Shawshank Redemption and Fight Club, where the brutality serves a purpose. This doesn’t; it just feels like sensationalism so they can show more blood, which this movie loves to do. The filmmakers could have conveyed the same message without such details. Instead, they let them overshadow the story. It would have been very interesting to see how small changes can alter lives. And to some extent, we do see that. But not very much. Each new future is really just Kutcher’s character saying, “Okay, what’s wrong with this future? Oh, that’s the problem. Well, I guess I better try again.” It loses the interesting premise and becomes a pretty uninvolving teen thriller.
One last disappointment: the final scene. I won’t give it away, but I strongly believe this last scene invalidates the entire point of the movie. Even though I did not like the movie at all, I at least thought the penultimate scene had a nice message and a good payoff to the plot. Then they tacked on a final scene that completely scuttled the message. The filmmakers couldn’t even get that right. Sigh. On a kind of amusing note, after I walked out, I saw Ashton Kutcher talking with some older people, probably New Line execs. I headed over in time to hear Ashton complain about the final scene himself. Seems he had almost the same thoughts I did. Pleased to hear this, I spoke up to agree with him, just trying to show the execs that Ashton had a good point. Instead, Ashton stared blankly ahead, pretending he couldn’t even see or hear me. And the executive I was standing next to said simply, “Who the hell are you?” Apparently this moron didn’t realize that the point of a test screening was to elicit feedback from an actual audience and build advance buzz. Berating the people who are helping you does not really engender much goodwill from a potential paying customer. Maybe this guy skipped the part of business class that said, “Insulted customers don’t come back and don’t recommend your product to others.”
Needless to say, I did not like this movie at all. Which probably means it’ll be a big hit with the masses. I thought it lost its focus and wasted its premise in favor of cheap shocks. To be fair, it seemed to get a good audience reaction, and three out of the four friends I was there with liked it. The fourth didn’t, but I didn’t get a chance to ask why. This movie does not deserve to be banned, as the previous reviewer ludicrously suggested. It does deserve to flop and lose lots of money though. But it probably won’t.
Until next time,
Irish-Man
There’s a lot of machinery in place to try and make Ashton Kutcher a star right now, and the opening of JUST MARRIED suggests that either (A) he’s building a fan base that will turn out to see him in a film, (B) people were desperate beyond words to be entertained that weekend, or (C) a lot of people with head injuries are buying tickets these days. Whatever the case, this one is fairly important, so let’s see what sort of fine-tuning happens between now and release.
"Moriarty" out.
