Kutcher Yearns to Be Taken Seriously

Jan. 23 -- Ashton Kutcher taken seriously as a thespian? It's no more unlikely than his tabloid-topping love affair with Demi Moore — and, no, you're not getting punk'd.

Double-Oscar winner Tom Hanks started as a cross-dressing goofball on TV's Bosom Buddies. Bachelor Party and some of his other early films were as subtle and sophisticated as Dude, Where's My Car? — Kutcher's most celebrated film effort to date.

Who thought Robin Williams would win an Academy Award back when he was best known as Mork from Ork? And who now doubts the acting ability of Bill Murray, who's gone from Meatballs to possible Oscar contender for his work in Lost in Translation?

Of course, there's a little thing called talent … and just because you can make TV audiences laugh doesn't mean you can carry a big-screen drama. Still, you have to admire Kutcher for gambling on The Butterfly Effect, opening today, just as he's riding high on the success of That '70s Show and Punk'd.

Kutcher can star in just about any comedy and expect a long line of teens to vault him to the upper reaches of the box office. His last starring romp, Just Married, opened at No. 1, raking in a respectable $17.5 million its first weekend.

But The Butterfly Effect is an R-rated supernatural thriller, and that might exclude his younger fans. This is a violent movie with graphic violence and disturbing images of pedophilia.

Kutcher plays college student Evan Treborn, who goes back in time by reading his old journals in hopes of reversing a wretched childhood. But each time Kutcher goes back, he returns to the present finding things even more screwed up — and none of it is played as the sort of pranks he's so famous for on his MTV show.

Even Kutcher was uncharacteristically serious in interviews plugging the film, speculating on how each of us is haunted by our past.

"Can we go back and change mistakes that we have made, things that we have done wrong? Absolutely," he says.