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The Butterfly Effect

2004

Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber

Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Kevin Schmidt, Melora Walters ...

7.3

106,612

Fantasy. Thriller. Drama Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) has lost track of time. From an early age, crucial moments of his life have disappeared into a black hole of forgetting, his boyhood marred by a series of terrifying events he can't remember. What remains is the ghost of memory and the broken lives of his childhood friends, Kayleigh (Amy Smart), Lenny (Elden Henson) and Tommy (William Lee Scott). Throughout his childhood, Evan was under the care of a ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	James Berardinelli ReelViews	"A compelling and intriguing movie that toys with the powers of choice and chance in a way that is not overused (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"I enjoyed 'The Butterfly Effect' up to a point (...) There's so much flashing forward and backward, so many spins of fate (...) that after awhile I felt that I, as well as time, was being jerked around (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Nothing can save this repetitive bore (…) Rating: ★ (out of 4)"	NEG
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"It's pretty broad dramatically, I grant you, with some big sci-fi 'what-if?' narrative effects — and yet it has brio and it's smart. If the lead had been played by an utter unknown (...) then maybe the poor old' Butterfly Effect' would have got a little more respect."	POS
United Kingdom	Jonathan Crocker BBC	"Bress and Gruber (...) are clearly aiming for 'Donnie Darko' cerebral-cool. What they've got is something stylish, idiotic, and comical - for all the wrong reasons (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"	NEG
United States	Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly	"There’s a good head trip nestled somewhere within the film’s messy, sodden execution."	NEU
United States	Dave Kehr The New York Times	"Even by the lax standards of January film releases -- this month is the traditional dumping time for studio films that didn't quite work out -- 'The Butterfly Effect' is staggeringly bad."	NEG
United Kingdom	Sloan Freer Radio Times	"It's surprisingly dark and adult for a Hollywood project. In contrast to his joker reputation, Kutcher delivers a strong and believable performance (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Chris Barsanti Slant	"[It] manages to say less about chaos theory than 'Jurassic Park' did (…) Rating: ★½ (out of 4)"	NEG

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