A Thumbs-Up Review: Butterfly Effect (New Line)

[Lexmark3200]

Awesome. Simply awesome. Thats all I can say about the audio presentation of New Line Cinema's recent release of this past winter's "Butterfly Effect" DVD in the director cut's DTS-ES version.

Bought this disc for my better half today because I knew she loved the film when we saw it out in Vegas when it was released; we took it home and watched it in DTS-ES form --- the disc is a "flipper" with the first side being the original theatrical cut in Dolby Digital EX, and the other side being the director's cut in DTS-ES; why New Line decided to do this I cant say. But the audio of the DVD is a STUNNER, folks....in DTS flavor, it rocked my home theater. The dialogue, like 99.9 percent of films released on our favorite five inch discs, was very soft and then suddenly there were JARRING blasts of effects and "stingers" where the surround channels would blast on during moments of the characters' flashbacks and such; VERY well done.

The video was a mixed bag; there is an opening sequence, when we see Ashton Kutcher's character as a young boy come onscreen, and the video on the 1:85:1 image is STRIKING and breathtaking --- the greens of the lawns in front of the houses, the cars on the street, the colors all seemed to jump off the screen. Beautiful. Somehow and suddenly, as the film goes on, grain is introduced to the picture (which is usually the other way around), and the image begins looking like any other average DVD...with a slightly soft delivery and look.

But the sound? Wow. Get this and demo your DTS capabilities. I wont get into the specifics of the plot of "Butterfly Effect" so you can see the film for yourselves (for those who never saw it) but in a nutshell, it deals with touching on some Chaos Theory and the responsibility of holding the power to change events of the past....and what consequences come with that.

While this disc is the property of my girlfriend because I did buy it for her, I may need to pick this up just for demo purposes. This sure looked and sounded a hell of a lot better than the last DVD I purchased, "Blue Thunder," the 1980s cop thriller about Roy Scheider (Jaws) and his futuristic helicopter.....man, did Columbia **** this one up....there is a widescreen presentation on one side of the disc and a full screen on the other. The full screen was RIDDLED and LOADED with grain....an absolute HORRIBLE picture. The audio, in Dolby 2.0 "Stereo Surround" was just as bad.....couldnt hear any dialogue until my receiver was cranked beyond reasonable human levels....the "fly-over" effects of the helicopters were cheesy and weak; no power whatsoever to the audio. What a waste of cash, but the film was on my want list, so seeing it for ten bucks sold me.

Something tells me Columbia isnt going to re-visit Blue Thunder on Superbit...