Ha ha ha! Comedy Eric Schneider, Comedian

Hey check me out, I’m in a YouTube commercial for Earnhardt Ford in Chandler, AZ! It’s part of the Ford Swap Your Ride event. We swapped out Amanda’s Hyundai for a Ford Edge. She’s going to drive it around for a few days then report back on how it compares to her Santa Fe.

Shooting the commercial was super fun. When all the spots are finished, I’ll put together an outtakes video.

I’ve been tricked again into seeing a shitty movie! My problem is I’m too trusting when it comes to someone telling me a movie was really good. This time it was a recommendation from my mother. I should have known better because my mom is notorious for having the worst taste in movies. Have you ever gone into a video store, looked at the cover of a movie, and asked yourself “Who the F would ever rent THIS?” Well the answer is, “My Mom.”

Anyway, when my Mother suggested I watch “The Butterfly Effect” with Ashton Kutcher, I immediately refused. First of all, I hate Ashton Kutcher, and second, well… I hate Ashton Kutcher. I guess what made me reconsider was the fact that the film was more mainstream than the completely obscure titles my mother usually rents. Not only that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her as confident that I’d like a movie as much as she was.

So I caved in, and since I already wasted 2 hours of my life watching that crap, what’s a few extra minutes more to review it? Hopefully I can prevent someone else from watching it.

OK here’s a quick plot summary:

Ashton Kutcher’s character’s childhood is plagued by reoccurring, mysterious blackout. When he wakes up from each black out, something terrible has happened to either him or his childhood friends. The twist is, he can’t remember what happened. We find out later that during these blackouts, he gets molested, his friend kills his dog, a prank goes wrong and they kill a woman and child, and the list goes on.

As a child, young Ashton (played by some kid actor) would keep journals of all the events leading up to and immediately following each black out. When he grows up, he discovers that when he reads his old journals, and gets to the parts where he blacks out, he is magically transported back in time and see the events that he was never able to remember. In fact, he’s able to actually change the course of time by preventing the horrible outcomes.

Although well intentioned, Ashton’s interference with the past ends up creating an alternate future in which things are even worse than they were before. Eventually, he resigns to the fact that it was best to have never changed the past in the fist place. He decides to fix all the things he changed by using his last chance to go back in time to prevent himself from ever meeting his childhood friends. I read somewhere that in an alternate ending, he actually prevents himself from being born.

In theory, it sorta sounds interesting, but it was everything but. That’s saying a lot coming from me, because I usually love time travel movies.

This movie goes from being way too dark, grim, and disturbing to being super gimmicky and lame. In one of the time travel episodes, adult Ashton goes back in time and prevents his friend’s father from filming child pornography staring his daughter and young Ashton. Ashton returns to the present only to discover that his change caused him and his girlfriend to become a stereotypical frat guy and sorority girl couple. Zany hi-jinks ensues.

After watching this move, I think I can say I hate Ashton Kutcher even more than I did before. I thought his acting was terrible with a capital “T”. In all fairness, trying to match his riveting performance in “Dude Where’s My Car” was quite a tall order and was bound to come up short. I guess they all can’t be winners.

In my opinion the child actors did a far better job of acting than the adults. I still have no clue how they decided to cast the woman who played Ashton’s mom. She literally sounded like she was sucking on helium the whole movie.

Whenever I watch a bad movie I think try find at least one redeeming quality, and I think of what they could have changed to make it better, but this movie made that virtually impossible. Maybe if the childhood events weren’t so violent and disturbing, the results of the time travel would have been more digestible? Maybe if Ashton Kutcher wasn’t in it, it would have been better? Probably not, but at least I wouldn’t have had to look at his face.

I give this movie one huge thumbs up the butt.