The Butterfly Effect (DVD)

"It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world." - Chaos Theory

These were the opening lines of The Butterfly Effect which was released in 2004 and stars Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn and Amy Smart as Kayleigh Miller.


THE PLOT

From the age of 7 Evan has had random blackouts when significant events occur in his life, so on medical advice he is advised to keep diaries of everything that he can remember which he continues to do into adulthood. As an adult aged 20 he finds that by reading back over past events in his diaries he can will those past events to change with varying levels of success and failure. He keeps trying to change events so that it works out well for everyone he cares about but why is it that it always goes pear-shaped for 1 or more people (including himself)? How can he get it right? Or will he ever get it right?

THE ANALYSIS

The Good

I saw this film on terrestrial TV some time back and liked it so much I decided to buy the DVD, not just the regular DVD but the "Director's Cut" version of it as I found the whole concept of the film really intriguing and wanted to know more about what was behind it all. Firstly I have to say I was VERY confused when I got to the end of the film as I couldn't recall the film ending this way and several scenes during the film seemed unfamiliar which was strange as I had watched the film with my full attention originally (I put it down to it having been about 3 years between watching the film for the first time and now). I then remembered I had just watched the "Director's Cut" - in which the ending is quite different from that of the theatrical version. When I recovered from taking in this new ending, I set about watching the DVD extras which I'll discuss further down.

Logan Lerman plays young Evan, he was 10 years old when this was filmed playing the role of a 7 year old and was very sweet and endearing as the innocent young Evan we see in the initial parts of the film and fabulously convincing in later flashbacks as a totally different character, almost possessed, he was fabulous I felt. We see young Evan at the start of the film being taken to school by his mother Andrea, very ably played by Melora Walters, who is running late for work. Evan's teacher stops Andrea from driving away asking her to come inside and see something and shows her a very violent drawing that Evan has drawn of him standing over 2 dead bodies with a knife dripping with blood, something which he seems to have no recollection of even having drawn. Evan is then taken to the Sunnyvale Institution for some sort of brain scan and we learn slowly during these early scenes that his father Jason was institutionalised some years ago with an illness which was never fully diagnosed but initially having had similar symptoms to those Evan experiences. Evan is desperate to meet his father and eventually his mother relents and Evan has a rather traumatic meeting with his dad (during which he has another blackout). We also see Evan going to his friends' house aged 7, the home of Tommy and Kayleigh Miller where their pig of father wants to shoot a home movie "Robin Hood". Evan has a blackout here and you start to realise that his blackouts happen when something sinister or traumatic happens in his life. Traumatic events take place throughout his life but mostly the film focused on Evan at the age of 7, then at age 13, then at age 20.

The character is played by 3 different actors at varying times of Evan's life; Logan Lerman, John Patrick Amedori and Ashton Kutcher respectively. It was amusing to see that the younger actors that were cast had a very similar appearance to Kutcher (similar skin tone and hair colour and facial shape too) which made it seem more realistic. I found both the young actors to be superb in their roles and was rather shocked to see the almost satanic transformation of the 7 year old character in one of the flashbacks - it really was creepy to hear language like that from a character that was supposed to be 7 years old.

I'd never seen Kutcher in a film before this (and not since as far as I know) and I found him quite impressive. Considering all I'd ever heard about him before seeing the film was that he was considered a "pretty boy" and married to Demi Moore; I wasn't expecting much from the film. But I'd definitely say this film is up there in my all time favourites list now. Kutcher had a lot to do with that and my opinion of him changed totally watching him in The Butterfly Effect!

Kayleigh Miller is played by Sarah Widdows, Irene Gorovaia and Amy Smart respectively. I think Amy Smart had the hardest job with her job as an adult to play out such a diverse range of characters in just one film. This is also someone (like Kutcher) that I'd never seen in a film before but although she didn't have as much on screen time as Kutcher I found her to be very credible in all the different "faces" of Kayleigh that she portrayed.

The character of Tommy throughout the childhood scenes is very disturbed. From watching what his sister went through with their even more disturbed father, he becomes over-protective of his sister but not in a good way and this over-protectiveness turns into a terrifying violent streak. Adult Tommy is played by William Lee Scott but it's Tommy aged 13 (played by Jesse James) who is fantastically scary as the horrid teenager with a penchant for setting pets alight!

Although the character of Lenny is present in all stages of childhood and adolescence and adulthood in each of the flashbacks and timeline change scenarios, I personally didn't think his role was as major as Tommy's and definitely not as noteworthy as Evan and Kayleigh, although Elden Hensen did a stellar job of portraying Lenny as an adult, even down to gaining 25lbs for part of the film (although it's explained in the DVD extras that the scenes of him being larger were filmed later than when they actually appear in the film).

I have to mention the cinematography and editing of the film. It was very cleverly done - the "happy" scenes are shot in bright colours and almost dream-like with green looking REALLY green and lots of pink and orange and "happy" colours with the darker scenes shot in a morbid fashion (with dark lighting and pale blues and greys) in case you have any doubt that these are dark parts of the film; they seem nightmare-like and you will them to end.

The soundtrack for the film was nothing that particularly stuck in my mind nor was it what I would consider overly intrusive as I have found in other films which go for maximum impact. Where sound effects are used though they are pretty intense and do make you flinch. The sound effects with the special visual effects used throughout the film do have a good overall impact which considering this film was made on a fairly low budget is pretty amazing.

I really did appreciate how much thought went into making this a decent story to follow and how the bits you don’t understand quite early on in the film are put there deliberately to build the suspense. The holes are filled and start to make sense as the film progresses and I found myself grinning and thinking “Ah so that’s what THAT was all about!” and “That SO makes sense now!”

I won't give you an idea of the ending but both the original theatrical ending and the director's cut ending left me feeling quite hollow inside and just a little bit traumatised. Strange then that I have chosen to put this film in my list of favourites where it's been since the first time I saw it.

The Bad

Considering the character of Evan was so close to Kayleigh from at least the age of 7 to 13 when his mother Andrea moves them to a different area for a better life for Evan; it was very strange that he's seen to grow up and attend college as a Psych major aged 20 doing very well academically. He's never been back to see Kayleigh - which doesn't explain his writing a note just as he drives off with his mother to move away saying "I'll come back for you". I found that hard to swallow especially as she had been a large part of his life for quite a while and been present when most of the blackouts had taken place. Even though it's a niggle; the story obviously wouldn't have been able to pan out the way it did if this plot flaw wasn't there so I won't hold it against the writers too much!

The Ugly

This is not an easy film to watch nor is it something that will make you feel happy at the end. Some scenes have *really* bad language and were quite vulgar and there were some that were very hard to watch as there was paedophilia/incest inferred (not shown, I'll add) and violence against children (by other children). None of this was gratuitous though so it was slightly easier to stomach.

The Honourable Mention

I have to mention Melora Walters who plays Evan’s long-suffering mother. Poor woman! Her husband went insane (or so they thought?) over their time together and was institutionalised and then from the age of 7, she’s in and out of institutions getting her son checked out for showing signs of the same insanity that had her husband put away. She braves through it though and she’s literally a chameleon in this film with all the character changes/looks (e.g. brunette, blonde, chain-smoking nervous wreck) she goes through but she is consistent throughout all timelines in her love for her son.

THE DVD EXTRAS

In the Director's Cut of The Butterfly Effect there are quite a few extras included within the "Special Features" section as well as the usual scene index, audio setup and subtitle options (English only).

Special Features available:

• Audio Commentary
• Text Commentary
• The Creative Process
• Behind the Visual Effects
• Chaos Theory
• Time Travel
• Deleted Scenes
• Trailer

I'm not going to discuss all of the extras in detail or there would be no point in you watching them later if you find it appealing.

The audio commentary is by Writers/Directors Eric Bress & J Mackye Gruber - they introduce themselves and tell you they're glad you're watching this version and chuckle saying "Yes. Thank God for DVDs." They also explain how it was a challenge to get the movie made and there were certain thing that the studio didn't want released in the theatrical version which they were able to release in this version (which took 6 years to make).

I did start to find the commentary somewhat annoying after a while as it seemed Bress & Gruber were just patting themselves on the back for what a fabulous job they did with the film and the characters. This niggled a bit; especially as I much preferred the ending in the theatrical release! It was also amusing to see 2 other alternate endings included in the extras and hear the reasons for neither of them having been used.

I found it interesting to hear about the difficulties during shooting such as having to shoot some scenes in one go (and actually how well the young actors managed this for the most part) and then others without the young actors available to film when it was evening due to union rules about children not being permitted to work in the evening, etc. Not something you really think about when watching a film; but there was one particular scene where one of the director's read the part of one of the younger actors and got to shout abuse at Eric Stolz (who played the loathsome Mr Miller) which he really seemed to enjoy being able to get away with.

In the Time Travel section the concept of time travel is discussed - how we've all at one time or another thought something along the lines of "If only I had been there 5 minutes earlier/later, I would have not been involved in that car accident/got that speeding fine/ticket", etc. Experts discuss how it's human nature to want to go back in time and want to change something in our past, making a change to something so things would turn out for the better - basically this is what The Butterfly Effect's story is about - someone who actually has the ability to go back in time and change things in his time line, except it always has a knock on effect on others around and not in a positive manner.

I enjoyed watching the section where the visual effects are discussed and shown on screen in slow motion. It gives one a deeper understanding of how much work goes into getting the fantastic special effects to work well on the screen and seem “seamless”.

The Director's Cut version of The Butterfly Effect is 1 hour 55 minutes or so which was cut down from 2 hours 20 minutes. Some of the bits that were cut are in the "deleted scenes" section which you can watch on it own or with commentary with the latter telling you why the scenes were cut which I felt were good reasons.

The theatrical version runs for 7 minutes less than the version I've discussed here.


MY RATING

If I was rating The Butterfly Effect, the original theatrical film, I would have most certainly been happy to give it a top mark of 5 out of 5 without hesitation. Because I wasn't overly keen on the differences in the director's cut, I'm giving this version 4.5 out of 5, which is still a generous score. This is definitely staying in my permanent collection, although I think I’ll have to now buy the DVD for the original theatrical release as it’s not available on The Director’s Cut!


TIP: If you've watched the theatrical version and are going to watch the director's cut, can I recommend that you look out for the scene with the fortune teller which wasn't in the original movie. It's well worth watching out for and taking especial note of.


TECHNICAL

Film release date: 2004
Director's Cut DVD release date: 2007
UK classification: 15
Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Elden Henson, William Lee Scott, Melora Walters
Written and directed by: Eric Bress & J Mackye Gruber
Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti
Production company: New Line Cinema, Time Warner
Filming location: Vancouver