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The life of an efficiency expert spirals out of control after his wife tries to re-set his clock to give him an extra ten minutes, throwing him off his tight schedule.

Directed by Marcos Siega, Chaos Theory walks the fine line of being a slapstick comedy and sentimental drama, that always tricky dramedy that can collapse on itself if you go too far either way in the tone of the film.

Frank Allen (Ryan Reynonds) is the father of the bride as this film opens, talking down a nervous boy about to either marry his daughter or bolt, but we quickly jump into a flashback that tells how Frank and his wife Susan (Emily Mortimer) originally got together, and the series of events that tested their marriage to the brink of divorce and worse.

The flashback opens at a New Year’s party, Frank is in attendance with his group of friends, including Buddy (Stuart Townsend), who mentions having seen Frank’s crush Susan at a party a week earlier.  As the party nears midnight, they all exchange their resolutions for the coming year, and Susan reveals that hers is to get married, and that she will choose her husband from her circle of friends.

Frank is the lucky winner, and 7 years later they have a lovely daughter and home together. Frank is now a motivational speaker who specializes in time management, which consists of list upon list of things to do, lists then prioritizing the order in which list should be worked, etc.  He’s set to give a speech one morning and is shocked to find out that Susan has picked this day of all days to re-set the clocks and try to give him an extra 10 minutes, but she screws up and actually makes him 10 minutes late.  Frank then misses his ferry, is late to give his speech, barely has any time to spend with Buddy, who he’d made plans to see while in the city, and is left alone in a bar at his hotel. 

He is approached by Paula (Sarah Chalke), who has just seen his speech, who flirts with him and tries to seduce him, but when he comes to his senses he flees the hotel.  Susan calls a few seconds later and is very surprised to hear a woman answer the phone in her husband’s hotel room.

Frank’s frantic journey home finds him in a near miss accident, and he takes the woman from the other vehicle, who is delivering a baby on a speedy drive to the hospital.  In his rattled condition he is asked to fill out whatever he can on the woman’s paperwork, and is inadvertently mistaken to be the father of her child.  As these misunderstandings begin to find their way back to Susan, she kicks him out.  In an effort to try and convince her he’s innocent of cheating, he even goes so far as to take a paternity test to prove that he’s not the father of the strange woman’s child, a decision which unravels his world even further.

Since his life has been decided by a series of notecards, he begins to practice his own version of chaos theory, writing down random whims on the cards and then blindly choosing what his next course of action will be.  While this makes for a few amusing moments, more often than not it goes nowhere to really move the film along.

This movie wasn’t bad, but I would certainly take issue with numerous plot points, some within the open scenes: What kind of nut-bar resolves to get married to one of her male friends on what feels like a lark?  You don’t really get the vibe that there’s ever been any particular chemistry between them in the past, she just selects Frank because it’s convenient. There’s also a big reveal that brings trust into question, but the events surrounding it happen before anyone becomes a couple, so that’s hard to see why someone would get so worked up, and finally there’s the ludicrous idea that you can make Ryan Reynolds look old and fatherly in the film by giving him slightly graying temples.  It’s like taking a high school kid and putting flour in his hair for a theatre production; he still looks young, but suddenly has gray hair.  Reynolds looks about 10 years older than his presumably 20 yr old daughter in the film, as does Emily Mortimer, so that’s just a tad distracting.

Upsides to the film include Reynolds uptight character having a few nice little freakouts and Sarah Chalke cavorting in her underwear.

The DVD of Chaos Theory features a small selection of extended or additional scenes as its only bonus feature.

I think that this would be a good call for a date movie, as it is alternately amusing and heartwarming, but you may have to overlook a few plot-holes to truly enjoy the ride.

3