The old cliché about sometimes needing to laugh to keep yourself from crying is bore out in today’s film, Chaos Theory(2007).  If you see a preview for it, you will think it is a comedy.  If you watch it, its dramatic turns will have you thinking otherwise.  These flipflopping tones are why critics generally panned it.  I have a different take on the matter, though as a Catholic, there are elements in it of which I do not approve.  Sadly, this is par for the course for most cinema, so we will not dwell on that aspect.  Instead, let us be thankful that God blessed us with the emotional capacity to feel more than one thing at once.  This does not work for most movies, but I am willing to give this one a pass.  Hopefully by the end of this review, you will too.

Another aspect of Chaos Theory that is unoriginal is that it begins at the end, a familiar cinematic ploy.  Young Ed (Mike Erwin) is about to marry Jesse Allen (Elisabeth Harnois).  He is nervous, especially when he learns that she had slept with someone else during a period of time when they had broken up.  As he paces through the venue collecting his thoughts, he is stopped by Frank Allen (Ryan Reynolds), Jesse’s father.  Frank inquires about the angst, but Ed downplays any worry.  Sensing there is more going on, and correctly guessing its source, Frank forces the groom-to-be to sit with him as he tells of his own adventures in rocky marriages.  It begins when he was about Ed’s age, being at this same hotel with his best friend, Buddy Endrow (Stuart Townsend), on New Year’s Eve.  They are expecting the arrival of Susan (Emily Mortimer), on whom they have a crush.  They form a small party awaiting the stroke midnight, and discuss their potential resolutions.  Susan proclaims hers to be to find a husband.  She does not want to go outside her friend group, meaning one of the men present will be her choice.  Without discussing the inappropriate manner in which she arrives at her choice, she picks the orderly, time obsessed, but kind Frank.  Moving ahead seven years, they are awakened by Jesse (Matreya Fedor).  It becomes apparent that their morning daddy-daughter time is part of a strict routine Frank follows, which takes on an added importance this day because he has a major presentation to give as an efficiency expert.  Susan struggles with his rigidness, and in an attempt to give him more time, sets all their clocks back ten minutes.  The problem arises, though, when it is realized that she mistakenly put them ten minutes ahead, making him late for the conference.  From here, Frank’s life spirals.  Sitting at a bar with Buddy later, he is hit on by Paula Crowe (Sarah Chalke), a young woman who had seen his talk and tricks him into going up to his room.  Susan calls in the middle of him trying to fend off Paula, and Frank tells his wife that he is coming home.  Susan calls back just after he leaves and Paula picks up, adding to her suspicions.  On the way, Frank nearly gets into an accident with Nancy (Jocelyne Loewen), a pregnant woman panic-driving to a hospital to give birth.  As a pro-life supporter, I was heartened to see him agree to drive her the rest of the way.  In the confusion, he gives his name and number before departing.  Hence, just as he is about to finally walk into his house the following morning, Susan fields a phone call from the hospital asking why Mrs. Allen left her baby at the hospital.  Between the incident in the hotel and the mystery child, Susan tells Frank to get out.  The obvious solution is to do a paternity test, which confirms that he is not the father.  However, it contains one further revelation.  Unbeknownst to Frank, he has a rare condition called Klinefelter’s syndrome.  In his case, the extra x chromosome he has had since birth makes him infertile, meaning Jesse is not his biological daughter.  It also points to the fact that there is someone out there Susan slept with around the time they got married.  Suddenly, Frank’s entire world has been turned upside down, and he handles it poorly.  I guess this is what is meant to be funny?  Instead of living by a set of carefully planned steps throughout the day, he writes down a set of choices on index cards and chooses from them randomly.  They involve a whole host of behaviors that need not be enumerated.  When Susan finally learns the truth, it is her turn to try and fix the situation.  Her first idea is to get Buddy to talk to Frank.  While doing so, he hears of Frank’s condition and that Frank is not Jesse’s dad.  If you guessed that this means Buddy is the father, then well done.  Because he had always been into Susan, Buddy attempts to woo her with flowers and romantic overtures, but she wants nothing to do with them.  After one last night of shameful carousing, Frank returns home to try to talk to Susan.  As she is upstairs attending to Jesse, he finds the roses from Buddy and leaves.  Frank goes to a department store, purchases a shotgun, and lures Buddy to a lake house with the intention of murdering his best friend.  Buddy informs Susan, and she and Jesse make their way to that location.  Going out on the water, Frank only manages to shoot a hole in the bottom of the boat, requiring them to save each other from drowning.  During their ordeal, Buddy points out that despite everything, Susan always chooses Frank.  With that, Frank returns to his family, and we soon get back to where the movie began.  The film ends with the marriage of Ed and Jesse.

While Chaos Theory concludes with the happy occasion of a wedding, most of the rest sounds pretty sad.  There is one saving grace, though, that makes dealing with the questionable moments and sadness worthwhile to a certain degree.  After retelling the story of his marriage, Frank remarks about the erratic nature of the human heart.  Love is different, or as Frank puts it, “The most important thing about love is that we choose to give it and we choose to receive it, making it the least random act in the entire universe.”  This is a perfect way of looking at how God created the universe, and us.  He made us in His image, but His ways are not his ways.  Though it may not appear that way, nothing happens by chance but that which God wills.  It is a concept against which many have rebelled, including Frank.  This thinking applies to the orderly way in which he lived his life before that fateful day, and the chaos he tried to introduce into it afterwards.  To try and so precisely control our daily existence is just as fruitless as being completely out of control.  There is something to be said about surrendering our will to that of God, but that involves a conscious choice.  This may seem paradoxical, and sometimes Faith is like that, but I prefer to see it as a balance.  In any case, on a deeper level it speaks to the loving choice God made when He created the universe.  He did not have to do that, or to send His only son to die for our sins.  On a smaller level, Frank does not have to stay with Susan and Jesse.  Who could blame him if he decided to move on with his life?  Instead, he stays with the family he knows.  In other words, he chooses to love them, even Buddy in the end.  He may have made some terrible decisions in coping with his grief, but he ultimately takes the Christ-like path.

The thing about Chaos Theory and taking that Christ-like path is that it is one not often chosen, especially in our modern world.  The same goes for this movie, which I had never heard of before finding it today on Amazon Prime.  Having picked it, I am glad that I found it.  I can understand if you think otherwise based on what I have written, but you might be surprised.