Line #1 YMMV/TheButterflyEffect


1	* BestKnownForTheFanservice: The graphic sex scene in the third film is one of the first things you'll hear about it.
2	* CriticalDissonance: Critics generally hated it, but audiences were kinder and it made its money back several times over. This can be seen in the Rotten Tomatoes scores: 33% for critics versus 81% for audiences. It also has a decent 7.6 on [=IMDb=].
3	* CriticProof: It got poor reviews from critics, but it was nonetheless a box office success, making 96.8 million USD on a 13 million dollar budget.
4	* FetishRetardant: The glass table sex scene in ''Revelations''.
5	* FirstInstallmentWins: Well... there are two obscure direct-to-DVD sequels but [[{{Sequelitis}} don't worry about those]].
6	* JustHereForGodzilla: Considering the massive hatedom of Ashton Kutcher, quite a few people have noted that there's a certain perverse pleasure to watching this film, and getting to discover over and over again what horrible situation he's landed himself in this time. Whatever else can be said of him, [[SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct he actually gives a fairly nuanced performance in this film.]]
7	* MoralEventHorizon: Tommy crosses this when he [[spoiler:sets Evan's dog on fire]].
8	* {{Narm}}: The whole film is filled with this, apart from also being a relentless DeusAngstMachina. Basically, any time something particularly horrible happens to Evan, his TraumaCongaLine is just so over the top it's hard to take seriously.
9	** When he's a kid, Tommy's constant cursing and his vulgar {{MST}}-ing on the Gluttony victim from ''Film/{{Se7en}}'' in the cinema. In the same scene, he also beats up a guy twice his size in the cinema after witnessing Evan and Kayleigh (who is his sister, by the way) kiss.
10	** Being molested by a friend's father is a realistic source of angst. '''Blowing up a woman and her child with a stick of dynamite''' is like something out of a Creator/TexAvery cartoon.
11	** Evan accidentally crushing a granola bar [[spoiler:with his prosthetic hand.]]
12	** The deadly serious use of the word "fuck bag" to defuse a child abuse situation.
13	** The reaction of the cellmate to the magically appearing "stigmata".
14	** The ending of the director's cut, where Evan goes back in time [[spoiler: to ''strangle himself in the womb as a fetus.'']] That's not tragic, that's [[RefugeInAudacity twistedly amazing.]] While his mother watches it in real-time on an ultrasound and screams [[OhNoNotAgain "Not again!".]]
15	** The sheer amount of crap in Evan's life even before he starts trying to fix it, which just gets impossible to take seriously.
16	** The StockScream used by Kayleigh when [[spoiler:Lenny kills Tommy in one of the alternate timelines]].
17	** ''"Oh, Mrs. Bosweeelllll..."''
18	** In several of the revisited memories, Evan's dialogue lapses into rather verbose, melodramatic monologuing, which make for rather jarring shifts from the otherwise fairly naturalistic dialogue in the rest of the film, and which are made extra narmy by having a 7-year-old actor deliver lines like "This is the very moment of your reckoning. In the next 30 seconds you're gonna open up one of two doors. The first door will forever traumatize your own flesh and blood." with a straight face.
19	* NightmareFuel: Whenever Evan has a DeadlyNosebleed due to the memories being re-written in his brains.
20	* NightmareRetardant: The scene where Evan wakes up with no arms. Also counts as hideously painful {{Narm}} in some scenes. And sweet Jesus, did we mention the granola bar thing? Well, we'll mention it again.
21	* RetroactiveRecognition: Hey, it's Percy Jackson! And [[Film/XMenTheLastStand Leech]]! And [[Series/Daredevil2015 Foggy]]! Also, [[Film/XMenOriginsWolverine the Blob]] is Evan's cellmate Carlos.
22	* SignatureScene: The scene that tends to be most often brought up during discussions of the film is the prison stigmata sequence, because it's a massive gaping PlotHole and one of the most egregious examples ever of a film ignoring its own internal logic, especially because the story otherwise repeatedly and strongly emphasizes that every little thing done in the past will radically change the trajectory of the future (it's the entire title, in fact).
23	* SpecialEffectsFailure: The visual effects for Evan's amputated arms are extremely ropey. Fortunately they're only visible in one scene and are otherwise covered by prosthetics.
24	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: One of the major criticisms of the film was that it was so ''phenomenally'' depressing that by the end most of the audience was wishing they could spontaneously commit suicide too. Evan has to cope with being molested by his friend's father (and then attacked by his own father while the latter is institutionalized), accidentally blowing up a woman and her baby with a stick of dynamite, having his beloved dog burned to death, and watching his best friend lose his mind...'''and that's just the first half-hour of the movie!'''
25	* TheWoobie:
26	** Evan is molested by Kayleigh's pedophile father, accidentally kills a mother and her baby, lost his best friend (who couldn't cope with the guilt and eventually became a chronically depressed recluse), loses his arms in another timeline and sees his girlfriend connect with the best friend instead until Evan tries to commit suicide (which fails), he suffers repeated brain damage every time he resets the timeline until he's nearly hospitalized as a vegetable, and that's just a selection of his crappy, ''crappy'' life.
27	** Kayleigh (along with her brother Tommy) were also molested by her father, and she went through most of the other hardships that Evan faced. In one timeline she becomes a drug-addicted, self-loathing, streetwalker. In another her boyfriend beats her psychotic brother to death in front of her. [[spoiler:This is later subverted when Evan ensures that she and her brother will live a happy life being raised by her mother, with no memories of the alternate timelines.]]

Context YMMV / TheButterflyEffect