Critic's Grade: B

In the opening quote of "The Butterfly Effect," taken from the Chaos Theory, we're told that something as simple as the flapping of the insect's wings can instigate a typhoon on the other side of the planet. A great opener, if you ask me, and one that deserves a movie that lives up to such a claim. It's not that this finely-wrought thriller doesn't possess a decent script, one with far less plot missteps than you might imagine for material about augmenting the past and its consequences. And surely Ashton Kutcher, who has since become known by all as Demi Moore's boy-toy, turns in a better performance than anyone had any right to expect from the host of MTV's "Punk'd." But dude, seriously, where's the fire?

First, the story: ever since the age of seven, young Evan Treborn (played as an adult by Kutcher) has suffered from blackouts that leave his memory crippled and unable to recall important events in his life. We see this throughout the course of his childhood, and later his teenage years, right up to college, at which point they cease to plague him any longer. But that doesn't mean that Evan doesn't have other memories, those of his friends growing up, specifically Kayleigh Miller, his first love and sister of his best friend Tommy, who had a tendency towards violent behavior especially after discovering the attraction between his sibling and friend.

All throughout his formative years Evan's mother Andrea (Melora Walters) refused to allow him to see his father, who was institutionalized after claiming that he possessed a method of altering the past to affect the future when things weren't going so well. And so it should come as no surprise that Evan himself soon finds he has such capabilities, afforded him by his journals he kept growing up to keep his memory intact. Having marked several pages throughout the writings with Post-It notes indicating a blackout, he journeys back to his entries and soon finds himself able to rearrange events he could not remember until now.

But as with any supernatural gift, this one comes with a hefty price. He may be able to change the past, but Evan soon discovers through a series of mishaps that he cannot control the outcome of these alterations, many of which lead to disastrous, unexpected results. His first round of "playing God" brings Kayleigh (Amy Smart) back from a sudden suicide, brought about after resurfaced childhood memories of her father's sexual abuse. After returning to the past to warn her father about the consequences of his actions, Evan wakes up to find his love alive and well, and very much in love with him. What he soon finds out, however, is that by fending off her father's past abuse, he only intensified the violence by him towards Tommy, who in this future would go on to be released from prison and pay a visit to Evan, which ends in fatal bloodshed.

This kind of thing continues for much of the rest of the movie, with Evan realizing his mistakes and repeatedly going back to try and fix them. It soon becomes an obsession for him, first trying to get Kayleigh back, and then becoming consumed with the various outcomes of those around him. The filmmakers do right by his character in that he is not the selfish idiot he could have been; instead, his actions represent a need to make things right, even if the manner in which he does it only leads to more trouble. Such a thread is highly representative of human nature's need to correct itself when it has steered its course in the wrong direction, and while "The Butterfly Effect" may not seem like the type of movie to evoke a sense of deeper meaning and thoughtful intrigue, there's more to this tale than meets the eye.

The film is written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, the twisted minds responsible for the screenplay for last year's "Final Destination 2," a movie that was all gore and no grey matter. Here, however, they prove themselves fairly capable of handling material that is above your average thriller, all the while keeping us in touch with the characters and making sure that some small amount of intrigue rests within the plot even in the most testing moments.

And believe me, there are a few. "The Butterfly Effect" is a movie that possesses solid writing, good acting, and smart direction, and yet it never quite solidified for me as a movie. We know what to expect once the ball gets rolling, and so it goes from being a matter of what will happen to when it will happen, therefore diminishing much of the suspense it deserves. The film exists to provide us with an engaging narrative and some welcome food for thought, and on those grounds, it delivers quite well. And that's saying something for a movie whose main attraction is better known for his weekly uttering of the words, "Dude, you just got Punk'd."

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