Ashton Kutcher, who made the leap from the highly rated comedy series “That ‘70s Show” to films like Dude Where’s My Car and Just Married, stars as Evan Treborn, who is haunted by suppressed memories of a deeply troubled past. “Evan is a guy who doesn’t know who he is,” Kutcher explains. “He has blacked out all the traumatic moments in his life, and through the course of the movie, he discovers that he doesn’t necessarily like who he is.”
One saving grace throughout his life has been Kayleigh Miller (Amy Smart), a childhood sweetheart who now as an adult finds herself equally lost. “Kayleigh has always been in love with Evan, since she was young,“ says Smart, who has starred in such films as Varsity Blues and Road Trip and will next be seen in Starsky & Hutch. “She grows up to be a lonely girl who works in a diner and hasn’t gone on with her life. She has stayed in the town she grew up in to be closer to Evan.”
Driven by his own personal demons, Evan discovers old journals that he kept during one of the darkest periods of his childhood – a period woven with blackouts in which Evan doesn’t remember anything. But by reading these journals, something remarkable happens – he finds that he has the ability to go back and inhabit his childhood body. “If you woke up tomorrow and you could live your life again in a completely different way, would you do it?” asks Kutcher. The trigger, says Kutcher, is when he realizes that his childhood sweetheart, Kayleigh, still loves him. “He decides to go back to his childhood and from there, create a world where everyone he cares about, most importantly Kayleigh, is happy.”
Once back in his childhood body, Evan must come face to face with the demons of his past. “We’re dealing with some pretty dark deeds - some of the horrible things that human beings do to one another,” comments co-writer/director Eric Bress. Co-writer/director J. Mackye Gruber feels that the story plugs in to a universal desire among human beings. “Everybody, whether they admit it or not, has a day in their life that they would love to live over,” says Gruber. “This movie poses some interesting questions about the effects of our actions – in both the past and the present.”
Each time Evan goes into the past, he comes back to some drastic changes in the present. “At the beginning of the film, Evan thinks that he’s going crazy,” says Kutcher. “He’s not crazy, but the anticipation is pushing him in that direction. Evan is constantly waking up and wondering ‘where the hell am I and who are these people?’”
Similarly, each time Evan goes into the past, the difference in Kayleigh’s life is wildly divergent, transforming her from a waitress to a sorority girl to a drug addict. Despite these changes, Amy Smart worked to keep the through-line of Kayleigh true to the character. “This is a dream role,” says Smart. “I play a character at four different stages, but all within the context of the same girl.”
While the mutual but unspoken love between Evan and Kayleigh continues throughout each incarnation, Kutcher points out the two actors kept it balanced on a fine line. “The consistent thread through all of the alternate realities is our undying love for each other,” the actor comments. “In fact, the first thing that triggers Evan to go back and try to change things is that he finds out Kayleigh still cares for him. But in some scenes we despise each other. We think that one has left the other for dead and doesn’t care – and yet we both care. It’s a bizarre mix of not wanting to show the person that you’ve been hurt or that you still love her, no matter what happens.”
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