Does the world really need another time travel movie? With such films as Planet of the Apes (1974), Contact (1994), and the most popular of them all, Back to the Future (1985), and with numerous television shows -- from Star Trek to The Simpsons -- having already explored the subject ad nauseam, are there any new time-travel angles that can be explored or any new twists that can be thrown our way? In terms of what The Butterfly Effect brings to the table, the answers are no and no.

The film opens with an oft quoted, yet scientifically unproven, statement attempting to define the essence of chaos. Does the flap of a butterfly's wing in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Such a heady lead-in coupled with my only prior knowledge of the film -- that it involved time travel -- I was ready for a rather clever or unique and perhaps intricate exploration of some yet untapped concept of time travel. At the very least I expected someone in the movie to use the intelligent-sounding phrase, "the time and space continuum." What I got instead was a poorly acted (Kutcher should stick to TV comedy), adequately produced, teen-flick derivative of the same-old same-old. You might say that on the evolutionary scale of time-travel movies, The Butterfly Effect is less like the missing link and more like low-hanging fruit.

Ashton Kutcher plays Evan Treborn, who since early childhood has experienced temporary blackouts -- caused by a neglected childhood -- that erase significant portions of his memory. Now a grown man attending an out-of-town college, Evan doesn't necessarily like who he has become, and he now realizes all that remains from his childhood are disjointed memories and fractured friendships. His childhood sweetheart Kayleigh Miller (Amy Smart) works as a two-bit waitress in a 24-hour diner with stale food and fresh patrons. Her life passed her by while she waited for Evan to return home to rescue her. Evan's best friend, Lenny (Elden Henson) is an emotional mess of a man. Lenny's been in and out of mental facilities and now spends most of his days building model airplanes.

Having kept daily diaries throughout his childhood and into his adult years, Evan discovers that by reading the journals he can transport himself back into his past and recollect his memories. Problem is, the truth he uncovers reveals a shameful responsibility in the outcome of his own life and the lives of his two best friends.

Armed with the hopes of correcting events in his past to alter the outcome of the future, Evan travels back in time, his adult mind in control of his child body. Not surprisingly, every time he returns to the present, he discovers that his actions had unpredictable and mostly undesirable consequences on the lives of his family and friends. As his repeated attempts at finding a desirable outcome yield exponentially more disastrous results, it becomes unintentionally comical trying to guess who will come back with a missing limb, who will be dead or which one of them will reincarnate as someone's prison bitch.

Man has always been intrigued by the possibility of time travel. Each one of us has, at one time or another, probably contemplated the one thing in our past we would change if we had the chance. And most of us understand the concept that if we change something in the past, it will have a direct effect on the future. After all, we learned this from the movies. But wouldn’t changing the past alter more than just human lives? And wouldn't these changes affect more than our own friends and family? While the grand concept of exactly what is affected by altering the past is mostly unknown, when you name your movie after a theory that has baffled scientists for decades, you'd better strive for a plotline offering a bit more than the same old thing.

(Released by New Line Cinema and rated "R" for violence, sexual content, language and brief drug use.)

Review also posted on www.franksreelreviews.com.