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45%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #2,810
...out of 20,698 movies
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Nick Larson discovers a supernatural way to alter his life and travel back in time to key moments in his life by looking at photographs.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: April 10, 2007
Some movies simply do not need a sequel, and if this one is any indication, The Butterfly Effect is one of them. I'm sure it turned a pretty good profit especially considering its direct-to-video status, but really; did the world honestly demand yet another take on this subject, and a shitty one at that?
It all begins with a foursome heading out to celebrate Julie's birthday at the lake. These kids - Julie (Erica Durance) and her boyfriend Nick (Eric Lively), along with their friends Trevor (Dustin Milligan) and Amanda (Gina Holden) - are having a good time, complete with booze and drugs. Julie and Nick take a walk together to celebrate her birthday in their own private way, but before they can get down to business, Julie says that she has something to tell him. Just when she's about to spill it, Nick's phone rings. It's work and he has to leave immediately to attend a meeting, so the gang all piles into the car and head back to civilization. Only, they never quite make it: an accident occurs, killing everyone in the car but Nick.
A year (to the day) passes by, and while looking at a couple of old photographs from happier times, Nick starts to have what appear to be hallucinations; the people and objects in the pictures shimmer and seem to be moving. Gee, I wonder what's going on there? He soon realizes that he can go back in time and relive these experiences, but he also finds out that changing one minor thing in the past can lead to a completely different future.
Perhaps calling this a shitty movie was too harsh. After all, it's really not a shitty movie, it's just that they could have done so much more with it had they spent a little more than twenty days working on it (a fact that is hammered home repeatedly throughout the bonus features on the DVD). In the original, Ashton Kutcher went through a wide variety of timelines: a couple of minutes ago, a few years back, and even back to his childhood. Each one resulted in a wide variety of changes to him and his acquaintances, and you quickly realized that "the butterfly effect" wasn't something to be toyed with.
Here, however, the film makers are perfectly content to simply send Nick back in time so that he can get a better job or so he can do some other trivial little thing. Sure, the obvious event occurs in which he prevents his girlfriend from dying, but from there on out, it's simply going back in time for mundane reasons and nothing overly major happens as a result of this. Sure, he goes from being an office drone to a vice president, but other than that, it's the same exact timeline that he had just left; what's the point of that from the audience's perspective?
Perhaps the film could have been saved had there been some surprises to be found, but again, that wasn't the case. When the camera zooms in on a sign that signifies a sharp turn ahead while the group is driving along down the road and it then zooms in on Julie unbuckling her seatbelt, well... is it really a surprise when they get into an accident? That's how all the surprises are delivered: with the subtlety of a brick to the face.
Avoid unless you're a hardcore fan of the original. It's not completely horrible, but it simply feels like the first half of a movie stretched out to feature length. Where's the surprises, the major twists, and the events that are supposed to make us give a shit about any of these characters? Perhaps they should have spent a little more than twenty days working on this: it could have been something halfway decent. 4/10.
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#1:
doney
- added April 10, 2007 at 3:50am
the thing with this movie is, if the original
didnt exist it'd probably be a good movie, but
it's nothing new. just redundant....
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#2:
bluemeanie
- added April 10, 2007 at 10:14am
We didn't need the first "Butterfly Effect", much
less the second. The first one should that Ashton
Kutcher needs to stay away from dramatic acting.
The second one made us wish we had Ashton Kutcher
back. And that's all I have to say about that.
0/10.
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#3:
Edd
- added April 10, 2007 at 11:42am
I think the only redeeming thing about this
monotonous exploit in cinema is Erica Durance's
acting skills. Everything else is pas se.
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