Kutcher spreads his wings in Butterfly Effect

Who woulda thunk that MTV's greatest punk could pull off a Poe version of Back to the Future? The movie's not without its flaws, but The Butterfly Effect's Ashton Kutcher does alright as a time-traveling hero trying to set the past straight. The best part? He never asks where his car is.

We're expected to take Kutcher him a lot more seriously than we have in the past: He sheathes That 70's Show and hops between less disco-prone decades as the tragic Evan Treborn, a young man whose pure-hearted time-traveling efforts are spoiled by Shakespearean irony. Seven years after leaving behind his first love Kayleigh (Amy Smart) and boyhood friend Lenny (Elden Henson), Evan discovers that he can use his old journals to leap into the memories on their pages. But as he repeatedly attempts to undo their devastating childhoods, he inadvertently worsens their futures, as well as his own.

Not that the future is all too chipper to begin with. In the status quo timeline, Kayleigh's scars from her father's sexual abuse send her to suicide, and Lenny suffers irreparable psychological damage from accidentally killing a mother and child. In fact, the first twenty minutes dedicated to the trio's childhood is one big ball drama and trauma. After that depresses the audience to death, we meet Kaleigh as a crack addict in an alternate future.

But those darker plot twists are what keep the movie fresh and inspired, illustrating the vulnerability of the supporting characters to Evan's dangerous endeavors through time. The fidgeting timelines provide a poignant kaleidoscope of characterization, allowing several facets of personality to be explored in one individual. Let's see Lenny as a happy college student. Now let's see Lenny as an institutionalized psychotic. Each time-tinkered transformation adds sincere depth to Lenny, Kaleigh, and other core characters.

Evan himself is devoid of all "dude" and "sweet," thanks to what seems like a sincere effort on Kutcher's part. While films like Just Married and My Boss's Daughter were rapidly beginning to define an "Ashton Kutcher movie," The Butterfly Effect is the perfect antidote to the same old. Not perfect in terms of dialogue or acting, which it isn't, but in terms of a bit more scriptural substance. Butterfly's genuine, imaginative intensity outclasses certain other sci-fi slamathons of late. And it successfully manages an original spin on a concept that's already been Time Machined, T3Med, and Timelined recently.

Though a good amount of such tamper-with-time predecessors have been special effects heavy and drenched in fourth dimensional explanation, The Butterfly Effect takes a much more simple approach. Some cool reality-quaking transitions from now to then and a few science-free sentences explaining Evan's powers are enough to push the story along.

With less "sci," more "fi," and a double dose of the de-Punk'd Kutcher, The Butterfly Effect pulls through. Maybe a few more like these and he'll undo the traumatic effects of Dude, Where's My Car?

Let's hope that's possible.

The Butterfly Effect is rated R for violence, sexual content, language and brief drug use.