'Chaos Theory'

Rating:

JOHN ANDERSON

April 11, 2008

If actor Ryan Reynolds isn't careful (see: "Definitely, Maybe"), he's going to parlay his good looks and engaging presence into a full-time job as a game-show host.

You have to wonder whether anyone, particularly Reynolds' agent, actually read the script to "Chaos Theory": Frank Allen (Reynolds) is an efficiency expert - an angle that goes almost nowhere - who stumbles into a series of "comic" circumstances that alienate his wife, implausibly, and which lead to a revelation that alienates him from his wife, quite plausibly. Without giving anything away, the movie - told in one long flashback by a convincingly aged Reynolds - gets more interesting when it stops trying to be funny, though it doesn't try very hard.

Directionless and visually inert (director Marcos Siega comes out of music videos, so you'd expect some energy, at least; a little chaos, maybe?), it's a gleefully grim movie, like a story by Ingmar Bergman directed by Nancy Meyers ("Something's Gotta Give"). It doesn't know what it wants to be, so it just sits there, like a Hollywood superdelegate. With Emily Mortimer, Stuart Townsend. Written by Daniel Taplitz. 1:25 (vulgarity, adult situations, smoking). At area theaters.

CHAOS THEORY (PG-13).