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BY TOM MEEK
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In this mind-bending thriller, Evan Treborn ("it" boy Ashton Kutcher) possesses the nifty ability to alter the present by rewriting the past. How he does this is slackly explained, though it has something to do with his father, who’s locked up in a psych ward, and a series of blackouts from his childhood during which a friend or a loved one winds up dead or worse. The present begins with Evan in college as a bookworming nerd until the suicide of his childhood sweetheart (Amy Smart) compels him to dig through his journals. After some F/X chicanery, the words jumble about on the page and then, presto, Evan is back in that moment, but each time he returns to the present, he finds that the consequences of his meddling are far from what he planned (you could say Evan gets Punk’d). It’s intriguing to watch Kutcher bounce from hip geek to murderous frat boy to punk inmate and so on. And writer/director tandem Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber make the preposterous concept stand up longer than it should, but in the end they’ll probably wish they could go back and expunge this one from their careers. (113 minutes)
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