The Most F'ed Up Time Travel Movie Ever!!
There's nothing more that I love then the idea of time travel except movies and TV shows about time travel. I've seen, or tried to seen, every movie and show about time travel, so I know a lot about this subject which I take seriously, believe it or not. I believe we can travel in time, we just don't have the means to yet. But enough of that, let's talk about this freaky ass time travel movie that stars Ashton Kushner.
Ashton stars as Evan and the start of the film we see him run into some office and he scribbles either a confession or a suicide note. Then the film backtracks to 13 years earlier when Evan is age seven. His mother drops him off to school and his teacher shows her this creepy ass drawing that Evan did. When confronted with it, Evan says he doesn't remember drawing it.
Thinking somethings wrong with him. Mom takes him to a shrink who tells him to write in a journal every day because he is suffering from blackouts so it might help him jog his memory. So he does so.
He then arrives at his friends house, Kayleigh and Tommy, who are brother and sister, to play, along with their dad, played by Eric Stoltz. Stoltz's character, who an alcholic, tells the kids they're gonna play "Robin Hood" in front of daddy's camera, and the scene they're playing is the "honeymoon". Hopefully you figured out what all of that really means.
Of course, Evan blacks this moment out.
Oh, and looking at my notes, I forgot that this creepy asshole's name is...Jason.
Yet again, some creepy asswipe in a movie has to be named Jason. I'm really gotta have a word with screenwriters.
Then Evan gets to meet his father, who is locked in an asylum. He blacks out and wakes up to find his dad choking him. Yeah, this is an interesting movie.
Anyway, six years after that, they're all chillin' in Kayleigh's and Tommy's basement, along with ther husky friend Lenny, when Tommy finds a stick of dynamite. He wants to use it really badly so they look around the neighborhood for something. They settle on a mailbox.
The next thing that happens is they're all running away in the forest and Lenny freaks out. Evan blacked out what happened and is clueless, and the other kids don't ever wanna talk about it again.
I should note here also that the kid who played Tommy is the same kid from "Godsend".
Anyway, whatever happened freaked Lenny out so badly he had to go to some hospital. Meanwhile, Evan is falling for Kayleigh and kisses her outside the theater that's showing "Seven" and "Dumb & Dumber". Tommy catches them and gets pissed off, so he beats up some older kid. Seriously.
Lenny gets out of the hospital and while walking through a junkyard, they find Tommy stuffing Evan's dog in a sack and pouring gas over it.
I rather not write about what happens next cause stuff like that upsets me. I'll just say Tommy accidently hits Kayleigh, Evan blacks out, and wakes up and is very unhappy.
Seven years after THAT Evan is now Ashton and he's in college and a very gifted student. He's working on a theory to help the brain gather more memories or something, I don't know, I'm not a brain surgeon. Evan shares a dorm room with Thumper, a fat punk/goth guy played by Ethan Suplee, who was the fat guy in "Mallrats" and the fat guy in "American History X". Thumper periodically has sex with his dominatrix girlfriend and wiping semen on Evan's clothes for some odd reason.
Later that night, Evan brings a girl back to his room and she finds all of his journals. She asks him to read from one and he does so. When he does, something very weird, freaky, creepy, and very, very cool happens: he goes back in time.
He finds himself back at the junkyard minutes before Tommy, um, does something to his dog. Evan comes back to the present and is freaked out. I honestly would think it was the coolest thing ever. He tries it again later and goes back to before the mailbox exploded. He finds out that whatever he does in the past stays with him up until the present when he drops a cigarette on his stomach and it burns him, leaving him with a scar.
Thinking this is so freakin cool, he decides to go look for Kayleigh, who he had to leave behind sometime after the incident in the junkyard. She's a waitress at a restaurant and when Evan tries to bring up old memories, she cries, goes home, and kills herself. Tommy leaves a rather threatening message for Evan.
Feeling guilty, Evan decides to go back and change things, so he goes back to the little Robin Hood porno thing and calls Jason a "fuckbag" and pretty much threatens his life if he continues to beat and abuse Kayleigh. Evan comes back and finds himself in bed with Kayleigh. Everything is different now. Kayleigh is at the same college with him, in a sorority. Evan is in a fraternity. Thumper hates him. Oh, and Tommy is a convict because his childhood was rather rough because Jason took his frustrations about Kayleigh on him. And Tommy is pissed at Evan so he breaks out of prison to get Evan, but Evan is pissed about the dog, so he beats the shit out of Tommy until he dies.
You're thinking, self defense, right? Nope. Evan goes to prison and is treated like a bitch. He tries to get help from his cellmate Carlos by giving himself Stigmata (Long story). He also asked his mom to bring him his journals so he can go back again but some skin head prison dudes steal them and the only way they'll give them back is if Evan goes down...well you know. Evan starts to but stabs the dude down there (ouch) and goes back to the junkyard.
Since Lenny had a tough time untying the rope that held the dog, Evan gives him a sharp piece of glass to cut the rope open. Evan talks Tommy out of it and Tommy puts down the torch but Lenny stabs Tommy in the back, freaking Kayleigh out.
Evan comes back and things are almost the way they were at the beginning, except the dorm room is backwards, which is probably suppose to signify something, but I'm not sure what. He finds out Kayleigh ran away at age 15 and became a crack whore since, which is the state she is in when he finds her. He vows to change things YET again. He decides to go back and ask dear old dad for advice since he learned that he too is a time traveler. Dad isn't too happy with this piece of news and tries to kill him. That explains that.
So Evan decides to go back to the explosion and he finds out what happened. Before the bomb went off, the lady who lives at the house came home and was carrying her baby when they decided to check the mail. Right when they were both standing there, the bomb went off killing the lady and the baby. So Evan decides to stop that from happening but he was standing by the mailbox. So when Evan comes back, he has no arms.
D'OH!!!
Oh and Lenny is normal now and is fucking Kayleigh.
Double D'OH!!!!
Oh, and Tommy is a Jesus freak now.
Triple D'OH!!!!
Oh, and his mom became a chain smoker so now she has lung cancer.
Ok, you get the point. Evan decides to get rid of the dynamite so he goes back to the porno again and gets it and treatens Jason (the dad, not me) with it, even lighting it up. He drops it through and Kayleigh picks it up and, well...yeah.
Evan comes back and finds himself institutionlized for saying he was blacked out when he gave Kayleigh the bomb. The doctor says Evan has no journals and is acting like his dad, constantly demanding pictures.
Ah-ha!!! Looking at pictures also helps going back in time! So he gets some home videos and decides to just change every god damn thing by going back to when he met Kayleigh, telling her he's a psycho more or less, meaning she will not be friends with a psycho. And boy do things ever change.
Evan comes back and everything is perfect. Lenny is normal and is his roommate at college. Kayleigh and Tommy moved to another city and are normal as well. Deciding this is the perfect life, he burns his journals. Eight years later, Evan is successful living in New York City, when he crosses the path of Kayleigh. That's about it.
Ok, I loved this movie, my girlfriend thinks I'm becoming obsessed with it, but I cant help but dissect it and that's what I'm gonna do now.
There were some minor flaws with this movie, but not a lot of people understand time travel, so that's going to happen.
First off, the burning of the journals. I'll buy that maybe even though he isn't friends with Kayleigh and Tommy, he might still have blackouts and is still told to keep a journal, but I would think different things would be written in there. I mean the porno thing never happened, the junkyard thing never happened, the mailbox thing never happened. But also if he was having blackouts because his future self was traveling back in time, and if he wasn't traveling back anymore, why would he still have blackouts?
I probably lost you on that one, I apologize. Just forget about it, watch the movie, cause it kicks ass. And maybe I can travel back to half an hour ago by reading this over again and tell myself I'm gonna make this review shorter.
Dang, didn't work.
4 stars.
"The Butterfly Effect" on IMDb.com:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879/