Ashton Kutcher is putting his comedy aside for more serious material.
“The Butterfly Effect,” which opened last Friday, stars Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn, a troubled college student who finds his past darkened by events he cannot remember.
According to New Line Cinema, Evan was encouraged by his childhood psychologist to keep a detailed journal of all the events that shaped his life. Now in college, Evan reads one of his journals and finds himself thrust back in time.
He repeatedly travels to the past to try and fix the hurt that he caused his friends, but finds instead that his actions have horrible consequences.
According to a press release from New Line Cinema, Kutcher studied psychology, especially disassociation disorder, in preparation for the role.
“I was interested in trying to learn what causes people to go into these remissive states where they try to hide their feelings in order to avoid having to confront them, which is similar to what Evan does,” Kutcher said.
Kutcher also discussed his leap from comedy to drama.
“I’ve always been interested in playing real people and doing dramatic roles,” Kutcher said. “I just haven’t had the opportunity until now.”
This is quite a change for Kutcher, who is known for his comedic roles in movies such as “Dude Where’s My Car?,” “Just Married,” and “My Boss’s Daughter.”
Kutcher hit it big as the goofy Kelso on Fox’s “That 70’s Show,” now in its 5th season.
He was also the host of MTV’s hit television show “Punk’d,” which was pulled last month. On the show, he managed to pull pranks on unsuspecting stars such as Justin Timberlake, Frankie Muniz, and Nick Lachey.
Caroline Zeretzke, an education sophomore, thinks it is too big of a change for Kutcher.
“I think he’s funny on ‘That 70’s Show,” she said. “[But] I don’t think he could ever play a serious role.”
Most people feel that he can be taken seriously as an actor, but it will still be difficult to forget his former roles.
Daniel Lejeune, a business sophomore, thinks that he is a decent actor although he made poor movie choices in the past.
“I think he could play a serious role, but he’s been in such stupid movies,” he said.
Kutcher has faith in his change of roles.
“I will never do a movie that my mom wouldn’t go see and be proud of me for doing it,” he said. “I wasn’t sure about this one, so I gave her the script to read. She was disturbed by it, but ultimately found it worthwhile. She said, ‘You’re showing people the truth. You’re not hiding it or candy-coating it. It’s honest.'”
Movie fails to satisfy
By Blake Robinson, Revelry Writer
“The Butterfly Effect” takes a decent cast and a unique plot and does very little with either of them, but despite all of its shortcomings, the movie does succeed at being a cut above most of the other cheesy teen flicks out there.
The primary factor working against the flick is its complete predictability. Once the initial novelty of the main character’s ability to alter reality wears off, the rest of the film becomes painfully obvious.
But even with that in mind, the film is not that bad – it would actually make a semi-enjoyable rental movie.
The premise of the movie goes like this: Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) is a boy with a rather unusual life. On the surface he is like most kids in his neighborhood – he likes wearing cool skateboarding clothing, does not skateboard, is a juvenile delinquent and he apparently breathes oxygen.
But that is where any relation that Evan has with reality ends. He is also prone to frequent blackouts that leave him completely disoriented and unaware of anything that just happened.
It seems that Evan suffers a blackout directly before anything happens in his life that may be deemed as stressful.
This apparently helps to ensure that Evan is not the only one left wondering what is going on, because the audience gets to blackout with him and omit the climax of pretty much every situation.
Evan’s psychiatrist suggests that he start keeping a journal to jog his memory in the event of a blackout and that seems to help keep him on better terms with sanity through the rest of his adolescence.
Now the movie fast forwards about 15 years and the audience learns that these journals somehow hold the ability to fling him back in time to do things differently.
Apparently time and space exists entirely in Evan’s head because anything he does in his memory affects the rest of the world. It is obvious that Evan has not seen “Back to the Future,” because if he did, he would know that changing anything in the past may hold terrible consequences on the present and future.
Through these little trips down memory lane Evan manages to murder a handful of people, wind up in jail and become an amputee. He also lands a starring role in a movie directed by an aspiring kiddie porn director played by Eric Stoltz (“Pulp Fiction”).
It does have some scenes that work fairly well. For instance, Ethan Suplee has some really peculiar spiky hair that basically steals the show – his hair that is.
It is also immensely satisfying to see Ashton Kutcher as an amputee.
D+