MOVIE REVIEW

Butterfly Afflected, with Ben Affleck, J. Lopez, Danny de Vito, several butterflies.

Reviewed by Scott Upchuk, movie reviewer for Piss-Poor Flics

Ben Affleck, who was in box-office bomb, Pearl Harbour, and Gigli, which was so awful it barely returned its distribution costs, is an ecological terrorist in Butterfly Afflected. I was rather dubious about screening another film featuring Ben and J. Lo. And, I confess, after about fifteen minutes, I was about to walk out with my bag of half-eaten popcorn and demand my virtual money back. (I say, 'virtual', because as a top movie critic, I get to get in free.) At that early point in the movie, Ben’s character seems headed for a very sticky end, and I thought, Wait! Let’s hang around; this film may be worth the twelve-bucks the yahoos will have to pay to see it.

I’m glad I diId, because it’s gonna be a blockbuster!

The film’s title is a play on the words, Butterfly Effect, the famous premise of Chaos Theory, as stated by Ian Stewart, (Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pge. 141). The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does [because of that tiny change] diverges from what it would have done. So, some time later, a hurricane that would have devastated some part of the world, doesn't happen. Or, one that wasn't going to happen, does.

Affleck plays an eco-terrorist who is hiding out in an island off Samoa, hunted because he set off a huge bomb that killed hundreds of entomologists who had gathered for a convention in Samoa’s capital, Pago-Pago. We are told in voice-overs that Affleck is a left-wing ‘insurgent’ who, under the name, Yusuf al-Muslim, has founded a militant group called CETI — The Committee for the Ethical Treatment of Insects — a Leninist group of nature-lovers whose holy cause is to rid the world of entomologists, people who get their jollies sticking pins in beautiful creatures to mount them in display cases, despite the pain the insects supposedly endure.

Affleck has been crouching behind a banyan tree because a troop of Samoan soldiers is hackling at the bush with machetes hunting for the hidden terrorist. As they pass by his hiding place, a beautiful butterfly, a gorgeous papilio ascalaphus flutters by, and Affleck, desperate to save the insect from the flailing machetes, lunges out trying to cup it in his hands. His sudden movement betrays his hiding place and after a brief scuffle, he is captured and taken in chains to Pago-Pago. The Samoan government holds a show trial in Pago-Pago’s soccer stadium, the dynamics of which attract world attention.

Marxist - Muslim groups hold huge rallies in major cities that get increasingly ugly during the trial’s progress. Reactionary police lobby tear-gas at the unruly mobs and in London’s Hyde Park, a hundred women and children are crushed under the wheels of Bobbies’ police vehicles. In Paris, a mob of shrieking suicide bombers manages to topple the Eiffel Tower, and then, the bug droppings really hit the cuisenaire, to coin a phrase. The gendarmes’ machine-gun anyone seen moving and ten thousand are killed. This action seriously polarizes the two camps, the millions of Muslim-Marxists who hate everything in the West, and the millions in the infidel West who return that hatred in spades. All the Hollywood stars and other celebrities ally themselves with the Marxists because the US president, Guillimero W. Bushbaby, has been known to use enviro-unfriendly chemical anti-bug sprays on his Texas ranch, and has been videotaped pulling wings off flies.

Haters of the Republican president hold a massive rally in Madison Square Garden with a shrieking actor resembling Howard Dean (played by Martin Sheen), mounting the stage and with arms pumping and rotating like a demented windmill accuses the president of forming a conspiracy to take over the world. Amidst the turmoil, the scene then shifts back to Pago-Pago where the show trial summarily finds Affleck guilty and sentences him to death by slow (and I mean, slow) torture, followed by hanging. The hysterical scenes that attend his publicly-televised execution in Pago-Pago’s main square, almost defy description, as his agonizing death is turned into world-wide entertainment.

Affleck’s execution is extended over ten days, and every night on prime-time TV, an enterprising American huckster (played by a fat guy with a scruffy beard going by the name of Michael Moore) hosts a CBS show called The Reality Torture Sweepstakes, which is viewed by billions seeking thrills and the chance to make a financial killing. Each night before one of Affleck’s fingernails is randomly removed, viewers can place bets on an Internet site on which remaining fingernail will be the one that tonight meets the torturer’s pliers. On Day Nine, with only one fingernail and his tongue remaining, viewers are invited to bet which – the tongue or fingernail will be next. This is a Bonus Night. Those viewers who guess correctly and have the resources to cover their bet, double their money.

(Some viewers might think all this is a bit tacky, even in rather poor taste, but it’s a refreshing change from all those clichéd special effects - car chases and the like. Making entertainment out of Ben’s torture not only moves special effects into a new dimension, but also is entirely in keeping with modern American culture and the public’s demand for stark ‘realism’ in media’s depictions of it.)

In the last episode, after all of Ben’s fingernails and tongue have been removed by the torturer’s industrial-sized pliers, bets are placed on the outcome of his hanging. We know that with the noose around his neck, he will be dropped from a platform fifty feet above the floor of the soccer stadium, where thousands who witnessed his ‘trial’ and the execution scene have been rocking and chanting for days. Every time a fingernail is remained, Ben’s shrieks are drowned by the chant, “oogoo partiti”, by the boisterous crowd. “oogoo” is Samoan for fingernail, and “partiti” is, well, guess…

Ben is to be hanged from such a great height, bets are placed on whether his head will be torn from his torso during the drop. Excitement mounts as doomed, tongue-less Affleck, blood dripping from his mouth, is forced to climb to the drop point on the scaffold. After last-minute bets are placed, ten-seconds of drum rolls and bugles playing the ‘lost pest’, Affleck, hands tied behind his back, is pushed off the platform by a laughing executioner (beautifully played by J-Lo, his erstwhile lover but now a Muslim Pago Pagan; see below).

Those who bet that his head and body will part company are rewarded as Ben’s bloody head rolls along the sand until it comes to a rest at the feet of the execution-torture squad’s commander. It’s a great scene, a triumph of the digitizer’s art (but I must confess, I stopped eating popcorn while it played out).

After Ben’s torture and hanging, the world really starts seriously going amok. The US president, Guillimore W. Bushbaby, played by a heavily made up Gregory Peck, looking remarkably like Geo. W. Bush, (yes, Peck’s dead but we live in a digitised world, remember?), decides to rid the world of WMDs, Warriors of Mass Disruption, i.e. the Muslim rioters.

He orders the drop of a precision, tactical H-bomb over the high-rise in Tehran where the head of the CIA says, “it’s a slam dunk” that CETI has its headquarters. After the drop, while the big hole in the ground that used to be Iran cools sufficiently so that “nu-cue-lear de-contamination squads” (Gregory Peck, mispronouncing the word a la Bush)” can enter to find any remaining WMDs. Osama bin Laden, played by Danny de Vito wearing a long beard, is hiding out in a spider hole in a mid-East desert, where on the mud walls are suspended a dozen or more cell phones with which he makes contact with his large, world-wide band of suicide bombers.

72+ Virgins Await You in Paradise

He is seen scurrying around in his spider hole like a hyper-kinetic tarantula, picking up one cell phone after another, and giving orders like, “Allah is great, each infidel child you kill above 72, will double the number of succulent virgins you meet in Paradise.” One scene had me laughing hysterically. After ordering one bomber to “please Allah” by blowing up Queen Mary 2 as she passes the` Statue of Liberty, Osama, dripping with perspiration, relaxes for a moment by picking up a doll representing the US president (remarkably, looking much like Geo. W. Bush). With a long pin extracted from the folds of his turban, he sticks it into the doll’s eyes, then the heart, then the region of the doll where Bush’s cojones would be. But he jabs so hard, the pin transfixes the doll as well as the palm of his hand holding it. “Jesus H. Christ,” he shouts, “You’ll pay for this, you fucking infidel, decadent, imperialist swine!”

Panting with rage, he wraps a towel around the wound and decides it’s time to fulfill Allah’s Will. He picks up a red-coloured cell phone and in a fury, barks into the mouthpiece the fateful order: “Allah is great, Allah is merciful, Allah wills that infidel America and its evil leaders, especially Guillimore W. Bushbaby, be destroyed.” Then he gives the secret codeword that authorizes the detonation of an H-bomb hidden in the Pentagon's Lady Generals’ Powder-Room, Purple-Heart Medal Display Case.

But, unfortunately, neither Allah nor bin Laden know about the Knock-Down Effect (KDE). This is a secret protocol of the Bushbaby administration that should ever a hostile nuclear devise be used against America, every device in the Americans’ arsenal, no matter where stored (other than in America, of course), will be detonated. This we are told by Gregory Peck in a solemn voice-over. To the accompaniment of Morning Has Broken, a chillingly appropriate 60s song by Yusuf Muslim (Cat Stevens), the camera lens takes us into earth orbit, twenty-thousand miles out, where we are afforded a view of the globe suspended like a jewel in space.

The part of the world we see, eastern Europe, most of Africa, and South America, is in the dark blue of night, with concentrations of light indicating the bigger cities; London, Paris, Rome, Buenos Aries. Looking like the new moon, there is a crescent of light in the east and we can see that the sun is just setting over Washington, DC. It is stunningly beautiful, and I feel a tear growing in the corner of my eye as it is clear what is about to happen. One after another we see huge flashes of light, brighter than the sun, everywhere on the dark side of the world. KDE, aka the death of civilization — in action.

Even Washington is not spared, nor is Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, nor even, surprisingly, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. (Peck tells us that through a Pentagon goof-up, Washington was not included among the sites exempt from the KDE protocol, because a CIA operative mistook Washington, DC, for the village of Washington, Ontario).

Well, that’s the bare bones of the film, and I’ve left out the love interest described in flashbacks involving Ben and J—Lo before she decides to become a Samoan Marxist and he to be the world's ridder of insect killers. I won’t reveal the ultimate scene that ties this all together, but I‘d be remiss if I didn’t tell you where Ben's obsession with bugs began.

Ben and J—Lo are engaged in PG-13 lovemaking, only their privates are not shown, except for quick flashes. After their vigorous gymnastics are over, the camera focuses on the sheets under J-Lo’s (generous) behind as she rises from the bed. There, Ben sees that under her ass, their thrashing about has squashed a beautiful butterfly. Throughout their lovemaking Ben’s face has been a mask of studied indifference. But, now, every emotion described in Acting for Dummies crosses his puss as he tenderly picks up the crushed insect’s bug-juice-spattered remains. In a rage, he slaps J. Lo several times upside her head, then yelling at her for her “cruel thoughtlessness”, angrily boots her out the door. (It’s at that point that J. Lo decides to join the Samoan Marxist Party, as Gregory Peck tells us).

Alone, Ben finally recovers his composure, but we can see in his narrowed eyes that the world’s entomologists had better watch out. The ‘Butterfly Effect’ indeed—a desperate man clutches at a beautiful, fluttering butterfly and this otherwise inconsequential act leads to the world blowing up and the death of Humankind!

Well, as they say, the rest is history; that is, until history ends with the blowing up of the world. I give this film the maximum:

Butterflies.

If you would like to read the true life story of a bigger asshole than Ben Affleck, wander down this blog to earlier stories about the misdoins of a truly world-class asshole, Brian Wales, aka Lord Asshole, of Pata de Gallina, the Dominican Republic: