This movie was pretty much trashed by the critics when it was released back in January and as such I didn’t bother to see it in the theaters. The fact that Ashton Kutcher was the male lead wasn’t much of a motivation either considering some of his previous films where he pretty much plays the same idiot he plays in That 70’s Show. He was getting so type-cast that I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t acting. I also tend to be overly critical of time travel movies after too many years of watching Doctor Who. Given all of that I was willing to wait for this to hit DVD before sitting down to watch it.

The story centers on Evan and three of his childhood friends—Kayleigh (Amy Smart), her brother Tommy (William Lee Scott), and mutual friend Lenny (Elden Henson)—who have had a very rough childhood. We learn just how bad through two extended flashback sequences—the first of which deals with Evan at the age of 10 and the second at the age of 16—at the end of which Evan’s mother moves the two of them away from the neighborhood. By the time we catch up with Evan in college he’s managed to come out of childhood relatively unscathed emotionally and that’s mainly because he had a history of blacking out during traumatic experiences only to wake with no memories of what had transpired. His psychiatrist had suggested the blackouts were caused by stress and recommended that Evan keep a journal, which he has done since the age of six. Evan ends up discovering by accident while reading an entry from one of the journals that he can go back and experience the events that he missed when he had blacked out as a child. This leads him to track down his former childhood friends only to find that Kayleigh has grown to be an emotionally fragile adult, her brother Tommy is a borderline psychotic and poor Lenny is still living with his mother in a near-constant state of shell shock. Not surprising at all considering what they’ve been through. When Kayleigh commits suicide shortly after Evan tracks her down and asks about a newly recovered memory involving him, her and her pedophile father, he’s driven to further explore what his old journals have in store and discovers that he’s not just recovering lost memories, but traveling back in time and taking control of his younger self where he can change the course of events. Seeing the potential in this newly discovered ability Evan sets about trying to make a better future for himself and his friends by meddling with their collective past and that’s when things get really interesting…

There’s a small blurb at the start of the movie about Chaos Theory and its “butterfly effect”, an idea first proposed by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1972 during a talk titled Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas? In short, the idea is that predicting future events in a complex system is difficult at best because small variations in starting conditions can lead to massive changes elsewhere in the system. This is the basic idea behind what happens after Evan figures out he can alter the past and it works pretty well for making a compelling story. Exactly how Evan is able to pull off the feat of projecting his present consciousness back into the past to commandeer his younger self is never explained beyond the idea that he requires some sort of focus relevant to the period to concentrate on which comes in the form of his journals.

Now if you’ve noticed the rating I’ve given this film you may be wondering how I enjoyed it when so many critics thought it sucked and the truth is I didn’t see the same film they did. The DVD release contains both the theatrical release and a director’s cut and I ended up watching the director’s cut as is my tendency to do when I have the option. Not having watched the theatrical release I can’t comment too much on how good or bad it is, but I suspect this is one of those cases where the studio insisted on cuts against the better judgment of the director and ruined the film in the process. Not like this would be the first time that a director’s cut turned a bad film into a good one. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some things one could be nitpicky about. For example, Evan’s actions only seem to affect the lives of his friends, himself and his mother with pretty much the rest of the world turning out more or less the same regardless and that seems a bit tidy when you consider all the lives you impact in various small ways over the course of a lifetime. Overall, though, it’s not too hard to suspend your disbelief and enjoy the film. I don’t know how the original film ends, but the director’s cut forgoes a happy ending for one that ends up being logically consistent with the storyline; though perhaps a bit far-fetched in some respects.

In the end I really enjoyed the director’s cut of this film. I thought the actors did a pretty good job of shifting from one personality type to another brought about by Evan’s actions in the past and I thought the film managed to remain reasonably logical and avoided breaking its own rules. Hell, it even got me to reconsider my opinion of Ashton Kutcher a little.