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Butterfly Effect, The
New Line Cinema

Butterfly Effect, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 30 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.4 out of 10
based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 171 votes
Read user comments
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 

What The Critics Said

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...

75
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.
Read Full Review
63
Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
Kutcher delivers a credibly serious performance as Evan, and he's surrounded by a skilled supporting cast.
Read Full Review
63
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.
Read Full Review
60
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.
Read Full Review
60
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.
Read Full Review
58
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.
Read Full Review
50
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.
Read Full Review
50
Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
With a surprisingly unhappy, anti-Hollywood ending that will appeal to those who like things dark.
Read Full Review
50
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.
Read Full Review
50
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.
Read Full Review
50
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.
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50
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
An entertaining piece of supernatural nonsense whose sheer audacity disarms all (well, nearly all) skepticism.
Read Full Review
50
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.
Read Full Review
50
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The film works best as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode.
Read Full Review
42
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.
Read Full Review
42
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Kutcher is the wrong actor to anchor a psychological freak-out.
Read Full Review
40
Empire Angie Errigo
Arguably worse than its sadistic absurdity is the depressing, limited scope.
Read Full Review
38
Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
So, here's the problem with The Butterfly Effect: It's silly.
Read Full Review
38
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Profoundly knuckleheaded.
Read Full Review
38
New York Post Lou Lumenick
So consistently silly and overwrought that it flirts with the elusive so-bad-it's-entertaining category.
Read Full Review
30
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.
Read Full Review
30
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.
Read Full Review
30
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
My advice? Grab Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and recast with Jimmy Dean.
Read Full Review
30
Slate Michael Agger
Impressively sets a new standard for time travel gone awry.
Read Full Review
30
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Abysmal thriller.
Read Full Review
25
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.
Read Full Review
25
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Nothing can save this repetitive bore. Dude, where's your memory?
Read Full Review
25
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!
Read Full Review
25
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.
Read Full Review
20
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.
Read Full Review
20
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.
Read Full Review
20
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
A bad-movie-lover's heaven, and a good-movie-lover's hell.
Read Full Review
20
Salon.com Charles Taylor
It's like receiving a box of Valentine's chocolates in which someone has deliberately hidden ground glass. Flee.
Read Full Review
10
The New York Times Dave Kehr
Inhabited by a genuine spirit of cruelty, both toward its characters and its audience.
Read Full Review
10
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
It's a terrible life, and a terrible movie.

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!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.

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