One of the staples of science fiction is time travel. And the most frequently explored aspect is not whether it's possible to travel in time, but rather, whether it's possible to change the past. In the newly released New Line film, "The Butterfly Effect," collaborating writer/directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber not only delve into the question but also explore the disastrous results a pull on a thread of the past can create

Drawing its title from an aspect of mathematical chaos theory that poses the possibility that a hurricane in the present may have begun with something as simple as the fluttering of a butterfly's wings in the past, "The Butterfly Effect" is the story of Evan Treborn (Aston Kutcher), a college student who discovers he has the ability to not only return to his own past, but also to change it. As the film opens, however, we're lead to think that this might not necessarily be a good thing, as Evan is trying to escape from a mental institution, hoping his final foray into time will ultimately fix whatever damage he's cause

As a seven-year-old, Evan (played as a boy by Logan Lerman) suffered unexplained black outs that always seemed to occur during particular traumatic periods of his life. To help aide his fragmented memory, he kept a series of detailed, hand-written journals. Years later while in college, he discovers by accident that reading the journals gives him vivid dreams of the past events described in them. Only sudden scars that seem to come out of nowhere convince him that the dreams are real.

So, when his childhood love, Kayleigh Miller (Amy Smart) commits suicide, Evans returns to the past to change the traumatic event that plagued her all of her life. Unfortunately, the new reality he's created by changing the past is worse than the one he began with. So he returns to the past again and again, finding each new result more devastating than the last. Along the way, he learns that his father had the same ability, but that trying to play God drove him mad. And after ending up in realities in which he's a frat boy, in prison, in a hospital without arms and legs, he finally changes a past event that prevents him from ever writing the journals and lands him in a mental institution where the film begins, desperate to return to the past without the impetus of the journals in order to make one last, finally change.

Bress and Gruber seem to be having a fine time moving their characters around through the various changes. While they seem to playing with the concept that everything is fated, since it's implied that Evans black outs as a child were actually caused by his time trips as an adult, they also play with the idea that none of it is happening at all outside of Evans' mind. Still, they move things along at a brisk clip without bogging the story down in too much detail while adding whimsical elements of humor here and there as well. In one of the film's best scenes, for example, Evan convinces his religious prison cell mate that he actually talks to Jesus, and then uses a time trip to create instant scars in the palms of both hands to prove it, which convinces his cell mate to help.

As Evan, Ashton Kutcher seems to be trying very hard to move beyond the Kelso role he made popular in "That 70s Show" and repeated in unremarkable films such as "Dude, Where's My Car?" His efforts are at least partially successful, since his performance is credible, if not somewhat befuddled. A much more interesting performance is rendered by Amy Smart as Evans love interest, Kayleigh as she appears in multiple forms, from a stuck up sorority girl to a burnt out scared hooker. It's not an Academy-Award winning performance, but she's not bad.

All in all, "The Butterfly Effect" isn't a big film that adds much to the overall concept of time travel. But it is one that will have audiences leaving the theater wondering just which tread in their own lives they'd pull if they had the chance.