..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

The Butterfly Effect
Directed by Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber

Ashton Kutcher plays a psychology student who discovers he has the ability, through concentration, to reach back into his own past and alter his actions in order to make the present more palatable in The Butterfly Effect, a New Line Home Entertainment Infinifilm release (N7173, $28). What is interesting about the two-sided DVD is that it allows the viewer to do precisely the same thing. You start out with the side that holds the 120-minute Director's Cut, which is the best but darkest version of the 2004 film. Then you can flip over to the other side and watch the last scene again on the standard 114-minute theatrical version, which has a happier, Hollywood-style ending. And then, you can go to the 7 minutes of deleted scenes, which have several more increasingly happy endings, until all is right with the world. As for the film, or the Director's Cut at least, it has a Twilight Zone tale appeal that gets you caught up in and looking forward to each surprise alteration. The performers, particularly Amy Smart as the object of the hero's rescue attempts, have fun changing their personalities to match their revised circumstances. The film is not eccentric enough to have a lasting cult appeal, but it is reasonably enjoyable as it unfolds.

Watch out for the sound. Whenever the hero has a jarring memory or something else like that happens, the filmmakers frontload the audio delivery to convey to the viewer a physical equivalent of the hero's emotional state. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track handles the effect just fine, but it is the DTS track, which is available only on the Director's Cut, that sends the sharpest jab to your complacency.

The film is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer looks fine, with bright, crisp hues, which are accentuated further to differentiate one 'reality' from another. The DVD has New Line's obnoxious Infinifilm menu design, but as near as we can determine, the subtitles promised on the jacket cover cannot be accessed, though there is English captioning. The theatrical version comes with no special features. The Director's Cut has prompts that access other special features as the film plays out, though those features are also available through the menu, if you can penetrate its mysteries. There is a 9-minute featurette that gives an overly simplified introduction to 'Chaos Theory' as it relates to the film, a lame 13-minute featurette about time travel in movies, a passable 18-minute promotional featurette, a decent 16-minute piece about achieving the special effects on a limited budget, 7 minutes of storyboard comparisons, a trailer, and, on DVD-ROM, the film's script. The film's team directors, Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, supply a commentary track for the movie and the deleted scenes, but it is of limited value, talking mostly about the story and describing aspects of the production, such as what happened during stunt sequences. They don't say much about how they apportioned their own responsibilities or what guided their choices.

August 3 , 2004

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- by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt's DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
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