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Butterfly Effect, The
New Line Cinema


7.4

based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 171 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for violence, sexual content, language and brief drug use

Starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Kevin Schmidt, Melora Walters, Elden Henson, Eric Stoltz, John Patrick Amedori, and William Lee Scott

Evan Treborn (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. Determined to do something now that he was incapable of doing then, Evan purposely travels back in time, his present-day mind occupying his childhood body, in an attempt to re-write history and spare his friends and loved ones these traumatic experiences. By altering the events of the past, Evan hopes to transform the present. (New Line Cinema)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Sci-fi \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	J. Mackye Gruber Eric Bress
DIRECTED BY:	Eric Bress J. Mackye Gruber
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: July 6, 2004 Video: July 6, 2004 Theatrical: January 23, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	113 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The ending is weak, and may be the result of the filmmakers writing themselves into a corner and not wanting to conclude things in a burst of nihilistic excess. Yet, even though it's a cheat, it retains a degree of resonance.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Kutcher delivers a credibly serious performance as Evan, and he's surrounded by a skilled supporting cast.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There's so much flashing forward and backward, so many spins of fate, so many chapters in the journals, that after awhile I felt that I, as well as time, was being jerked around.

Film Threat Staff (Not credited)

A terrific story, years in the making, that clearly stays true to the uncompromising vision of its creators. The results are on the screen.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

As a thriller, The Butterfly Effect is iffy and uneven, but as a portrait of a people, it's effective and intriguing.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Isn't a complete waste of time. If Kutcher seeks to transition from national joke to lightweight actor, he's made a decent stab at it.

USA Today Mike Clark

Unpleasantness alone doesn't sink a movie. But miserable tidings intensify when there's not only a high ick factor but also floundering storytelling.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

With a surprisingly unhappy, anti-Hollywood ending that will appeal to those who like things dark.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Better than you might expect despite its awkward, slow beginning, drawing you in gradually and paying off in surprisingly effective and bittersweet ways.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Somewhere, back in the mists of time, co-writers Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber must have flapped their gums in the fond hope of crafting a script; today, that whisper of hot air has swollen into a feature flick that rains down upon us a veritable torrent of inane plot.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

In its own ridiculous way, The Butterfly Effect is an entertaining movie, despite mediocre acting, lackluster direction and a story that's sometimes frustrating. It has the integrity of camp, maintaining an odd earnestness in the face of its own absurdity.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

An entertaining piece of supernatural nonsense whose sheer audacity disarms all (well, nearly all) skepticism.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Kutcher's performance isn't terrible, but the brilliant, bewildered, increasingly desperate Evan is the film's center, and grounding its flights of fantasy in rock-solid emotional reality is more than Kutcher can manage.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The film works best as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Ashton Kutcher wants to be taken seriously so badly it hurts. So does this metaphysical mess of a movie, a pseudo time-travel drama so complicated it takes more than half an hour just to establish the gimmick. And a gimmick it is.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Kutcher is the wrong actor to anchor a psychological freak-out.

Empire Angie Errigo

Arguably worse than its sadistic absurdity is the depressing, limited scope.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

So, here's the problem with The Butterfly Effect: It's silly.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Profoundly knuckleheaded.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

So consistently silly and overwrought that it flirts with the elusive so-bad-it's-entertaining category.

Variety Todd McCarthy

This overwrought and egregiously self-serious thriller about the poisonous fruit borne of child abuse grows more ridiculous by the quarter-hour and is poised for a theatrical life span scarcely longer than that of its eponymous insect.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

You have to, if not love, at least not mind a movie in which the very act of Ashton Kutcher reading is enough of a cosmic trauma to rip a hole in the fabric of space-time.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

My advice? Grab Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and recast with Jimmy Dean.

Slate Michael Agger

Impressively sets a new standard for time travel gone awry.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Abysmal thriller.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A film of singularly boneheaded conceits, Butterfly is populated by, and appears to have been made by, stoned college dudes more hung up on oh-wow twists than the need to make sense.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Nothing can save this repetitive bore. Dude, where's your memory?

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

As soon as I finish writing this review, I'm going to try traveling a few hours in the past. That way, I can improve my life by skipping this movie!

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If you approach this movie in the right frame of mind -- that is, with total contempt -- you can still enjoy it as a comedy.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

An undercooked allusion to chaos theory -- gives every appearance of having been conceived, planned and executed out of a high school locker room.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

As the requisite love interest, Amy Smart gives the film's only professional performance, while co-star Eric Stoltz, as the story's villain, walks somnolent through the scenery with what seems to be barely suppressed mirth. Given the deeply unpleasant plot machinations and amateurish direction, the actor's amusement is understandable.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

A bad-movie-lover's heaven, and a good-movie-lover's hell.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

It's like receiving a box of Valentine's chocolates in which someone has deliberately hidden ground glass. Flee.

The New York Times Dave Kehr

Inhabited by a genuine spirit of cruelty, both toward its characters and its audience.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

It's a terrible life, and a terrible movie.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 171 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jimmy H. gave it a3:
This film contains so much unnecessarily creepy imagery and abhorrent characters that one is forced to treat it as camp, lest the viewer become abysmally unhappy with the state of the world. That said, the unintentional-comedy potential (even more so with the director's cut "true" ending) is fantastic. A true must-see for film viewers with at least a half a sense of irony.

V Tuck gave it a2:
I feel I have to do my part to throw a warning in there. If you love movies with contrived twists and don't mind spotty plots, you may be thrilled by it. I, however, as much as I tried to like this movie, felt sickly averse to it pretty much the whole time. I thought Kutcher would be worse, but he seemed alright in the light of the scattered storyline and dirt-cheap sensationalism. I like some bad movies, but I hated this one.

musterion gave it an8:
After reading the critics, I was wondering if they watched the same move I did. Better than average file dealing with time threads. I guess it required them to think a bit too much. They all seemed to have raved about Donnie Darko.

Lawri gave it an8:
If you ignore the fact that Ashton Kutcher is bending the space-time thingy just by reading his old diaries (talk about macho, I think Chuck Norris himself would be impressed), it's a pretty entertaining The Story Of My Life movie.

Chris H. gave it a9:
A very well made movie, regardless of what critics think, this is worth a watch.

Macca Macca gave it a9:
I really enjoyed this film, but I knew it would get bad reviews. Critics hate it when Hollywood does something ambitious and intense like this - they think it should be done by some random cult director instead. And they always hate films with complicated story lines like this one - they're too lazy to actually bother to keep up.

J M. gave it a9:
Excellent movie. Must watch twice to get all of the twists you missed the first time.

Butterfly Effect, The New Line Cinema

Butterfly Effect, The
New Line Cinema