Wired Mesh

“I’m Ashton Kutcher, and I’m Insane!”

So Josiah and I have been co-writing film reviews for the Pulse (I'm now the movie editor, although I have no idea how official that position is, or if it will ever pay anything.) The movie discussions, along with my other Pulse stories, hit the streets every Wednesday. But for those of you who don't live in Chattanooga, or are just too lazy to drive to Greyfriar's, I'll be publishing each movie debate with a one-week delay. As for my feature stories, well, you'll just have to go find a Pulse. This is simply a free sample. (Actually, the paper is free too, but I'm sticking to my metaphor.) Anyway, here's our review of The Butterfly Effect.

“The Butterfly Effect” is America’s number one movie. Poor, poor America.

By Josiah Roe and Aaron Mesh

Aaron: "The Butterfly Effect" opened this weekend atop the box office, which means that quite a few people, myself among them, have now munched popcorn while watching pet immolation. The movie opens with a quotation about the proverbial butterfly that flaps its wings in China and starts a monsoon or something, a quote that is attributed at the bottom of the screen to "Chaos Theory." I don't know if Mr. Theory personally approved this film, but the first 25 minutes or so are certainly chaotic, and really horrible to watch: besides the dog being burned alive, there are scenes of a mail bomb blowing a mother and infant to bits, a father trying to strangle his prepubescent son with handcuffs, and another father using his own tiny daughter as an actress in a child porn movie. The movie is shocking, but not in the way it's supposed to be: I think directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber are trying for basic thriller frights, but I felt the same revulsion that I experienced watching footage of bloody car wrecks in my high school driver's ed class. Let me be clear from the start: This movie offended me. It exploited the worst, most appalling aspects of existence for cheap thrills; it's as if Ashton Kutcher's first drama were trying to punk the whole human race.

Kutcher doesn't even appear on screen until half an hour into the movie; when he arrives, riding a bicycle and trying to look troubled, it's as if Dopey the dwarf wandered onto the set of David Fincher's "Seven." He plays the grown-up version of the child that watched or experienced all the suffering of the first act; it's a wonder he doesn't spend his waking hours curled in the fetal position. He tries to recover his blacked-out formative memories, and discovers that he can, for no apparent reason, travel back in time and change those events from within. Of course, every time he changes the past, he rearranges the future. Unfortunately, he can't change the screenplay, which has him bouncing from one ludicrous reality to another.

So what do you think: Am I being too harsh here? And does Kutcher show any signs of acting chops?

Josiah: I'll be honest with you Aaron, I was pleasantly surprised to see Kutcher pull off an acting role that didn't involve a constant stream of juvenile stoner humor, not that I have a problem with juvenile stoner humor. Early on in the film I did find myself laughing at Kutcher for playing that particular role – but I think that was because I've so typecast him as Kelso from That 70's Show or, well, Ashton Kutcher from MTV's Punk'd. Couple this with the fact that the first twenty minutes of the film was something approaching respectful filmmaking, attempting to deal with childhood psychological trauma. So suddenly thrusting Kutcher in as the adult version of the lead was a tough pill to swallow. I kept waiting for him to yell "I'M ASHTON KUTCHER, AND I'M INSANE!" or something along those lines.

But halfway through the film I forgot I was watching Kutcher and found myself involved with the story. Whether this is because of Kutcher’s sudden ability to approximate acting or because of some other reason is difficult to tell. The movie is jarringly shot. It assaults your senses and sensibilities with a constant stream of horror-story images from prison rape to pedophilia. What surprised me so much wasn't Kutcher's ability to competently pull off interaction with these scenarios, but the scenarios themselves being served to the audience without ever taking the time to earn their emotional impact. That's a problem of script and directing, not Kutcher's. I don't think I've seen so much sensationalized violence and emotional horror served up in a complete moral vacuum since “Bad Boys II.” I'm not talking about counting swear words here, I'm talking about painful life events having an actual effect on the people involved. In Butterfly Effect, the only effect they seemed to have was to jar and shock the audience. That just feels somehow wrong.

Aaron: It seems like a stretch to say Kutcher "pulls off" this role. In all fairness to him, Laurence Olivier couldn't have made "The Butterfly Effect" convincing, but Kutcher actually takes implausible scenes and makes them completely unbelievable. He's called upon to look disoriented a lot, but he mugs so shamelessly that he seems less to be considering his newest circumstances and more often trying to remember what movie he's in.

Don't misunderstand me: I like Ashton Kutcher. He's a pleasant comedic actor. But if he wanted to segue into dramatic projects, why oh why couldn't he have chosen something light in tone, something that would have let him play to his natural gifts, something not so dang ugly? “The Butterfly Effect” is a dark, cynical machine of a movie, a thrill ride whose gears are oiled with realistic human suffering. Dude, where’s my soul?

Josiah: Fair enough. I think though that your problem with the film isn't that Kutcher is implausible in his character's role, it's that you feel the entire film is implausible, hence any triumph on Kutcher's part would be polishing the brass on the Titanic. I don't feel quite that strongly about it: I love a good sci-fi yarn as much as the next techie, just without all the shameless exploitation “The Butterfly Effect” contained.

As for Kutcher, I'll be interested to see what role he picks next. It's an absurd stretch to compare them, but for the sake of annoying many, let me point out that Tom Hanks started out doing cross-dressing comedy. Who knows where Kutcher will end up?

Josiah Roe and Aaron Mesh are two St. Elmoites who often stand outside the Bijou arguing about movies. They’re sort of like Ebert and Roeper, only without viable career prospects or functioning thumbs. Look for their film discussions each Wednesday in the Pulse.

Posted by mesh at February 4, 2004 02:56 PM | TrackBack