I saw a sponsored article from (I think) BuzzFeed pop up a while back on Facebook, and the topic was 'Films from the 2000s that you thought were great, but were actually crap!' I only saw two entries on it, but they both didn't deserve to be there. The first was Garden State, which was a bit bland and uneventful, but it was experimental and had a nice soundtrack, and I feel like there was a general shift in society towards indie movies after it was made. I would agree with my friend's review of it, which is 'Nothing happens!' over and over with increasing volume, but it's not too bad.
On the other hand, The Butterfly Effect doesn't deserve to be in that article because I refuse to believe that anyone ever thought it was great in the first place.
The Butterfly Effect has a few genuine So Bad, It's Good moments, but for the most part it's completely terrible. And as fun as it is to criticize Ashton Kutcher, it's the writing and the plot that kill it. Ashton plays 'Evan', who has blackouts as a boy and realises later in life that when reading his diary, he can travel back to the time during those blackouts and do things that change the future. Inevitably, everything gets really bad. There are too many problems to go into much detail so I'm just going to rush through the worst.
The characterisation is somehow both non-existent and inconsistent - a kid named Tommy is a Joffrey-level piece of shit who sets dogs on fire, but in one future he's a really lovely, charitable guy for no reason. Also, Tommy's sister Kayleigh is the love interest, and in some spectacularly uncomfortable scenes, it turns out they're being... uh, their Dad is a bad, bad man. Which leads to Evan going back in time and giving a stern talking-to, as a 10 year old boy, to a paedophile. Which somehow works. Maybe. But not really. Also he says 'fuck-bag' a lot. God, this film is bad.
There's also a really awkward plot hole when Evan travels back in time to impale his hands so that when he returns to the future, they're scarred, and this proves to someone that he can travel through time, but... if he injured his hands in the past, his hands would have always been injured in that future, so it wouldn't prove anything to anyone and - I mean, this is basic time-travel stuff!
And to top it off, my first viewing was the Director's Cut, which ends with Evan going back in time to when he was a foetus and choking himself to death in the womb, something that I would rather do than watch this film again. Although the regular ending, where Evan goes back in time and just decides not to be friends with the people whose lives he keeps accidentally ruining, is pretty boring and anti-climactic as well. So you have a choice between blandness, or pure, undiluted shit.
Well, that's The Butterfly Effect, Bad Santa 2 and the Assassin's Creed film reviewed. Just need The Watch and I've covered the four horsefilms of the apocalypse.
Film You're My Butterfly, Sugar Baby
I saw a sponsored article from (I think) BuzzFeed pop up a while back on Facebook, and the topic was 'Films from the 2000s that you thought were great, but were actually crap!' I only saw two entries on it, but they both didn't deserve to be there. The first was Garden State, which was a bit bland and uneventful, but it was experimental and had a nice soundtrack, and I feel like there was a general shift in society towards indie movies after it was made. I would agree with my friend's review of it, which is 'Nothing happens!' over and over with increasing volume, but it's not too bad.
On the other hand, The Butterfly Effect doesn't deserve to be in that article because I refuse to believe that anyone ever thought it was great in the first place.
The Butterfly Effect has a few genuine So Bad, It's Good moments, but for the most part it's completely terrible. And as fun as it is to criticize Ashton Kutcher, it's the writing and the plot that kill it. Ashton plays 'Evan', who has blackouts as a boy and realises later in life that when reading his diary, he can travel back to the time during those blackouts and do things that change the future. Inevitably, everything gets really bad. There are too many problems to go into much detail so I'm just going to rush through the worst.
The characterisation is somehow both non-existent and inconsistent - a kid named Tommy is a Joffrey-level piece of shit who sets dogs on fire, but in one future he's a really lovely, charitable guy for no reason. Also, Tommy's sister Kayleigh is the love interest, and in some spectacularly uncomfortable scenes, it turns out they're being... uh, their Dad is a bad, bad man. Which leads to Evan going back in time and giving a stern talking-to, as a 10 year old boy, to a paedophile. Which somehow works. Maybe. But not really. Also he says 'fuck-bag' a lot. God, this film is bad.
There's also a really awkward plot hole when Evan travels back in time to impale his hands so that when he returns to the future, they're scarred, and this proves to someone that he can travel through time, but... if he injured his hands in the past, his hands would have always been injured in that future, so it wouldn't prove anything to anyone and - I mean, this is basic time-travel stuff!
And to top it off, my first viewing was the Director's Cut, which ends with Evan going back in time to when he was a foetus and choking himself to death in the womb, something that I would rather do than watch this film again. Although the regular ending, where Evan goes back in time and just decides not to be friends with the people whose lives he keeps accidentally ruining, is pretty boring and anti-climactic as well. So you have a choice between blandness, or pure, undiluted shit.
Well, that's The Butterfly Effect, Bad Santa 2 and the Assassin's Creed film reviewed. Just need The Watch and I've covered the four horsefilms of the apocalypse.