This Butterfly Never Gets in the Air
"Goodbye Butterfly" isn't as good as "The Godfather." However, it might be as good as the lesser films you may see if you were to wake up in the middle of the night feeling the need to watch TV, and you happened upon a network you never knew existed. Might is the most important word in the previous sentence.
A young and adorable (are there any other kinds in films?) little girl is abducted and murdered. The parents freak out, of course. Her father, Ryan (Adam Donshik), understandably is devastated and obsessed. His wife flees elsewhere, leaving him to stew.
A couple of days later, Ryan is taking his dog for a walk. When they pass a nearby house, the dog growls. This convinces him that the abductor lives in that house. Quite a jump, but I suppose it could happen.
Ryan begins spying on the house and through his binoculars sees a man he believes is holding a plastic butterfly that belonged to his daughter. The man is Stan (Andrew Lauer) and there isn't a single scene where he doesn't creep you out, so it appears obvious that he is the guilty party. So much for audience doubt.
Ryan contacts the police, and Ivy (Marie Burke) is the detective who takes the case. She goes to Stan's house, questions him, and searches the house. The detective finds nothing suspicious and reports that back to Ryan. Ryan rejects her findings and hatches his own plan for getting at the truth.
He enlists the help of his buddy from the gym and together they abduct and torture Stan. The rest of "Goodbye Butterfly" plays out about how you might expect, which is a shame. Twisting it to a different conclusion might have made it worthwhile. Once again, might is the most important part of the preceding sentence.
There's nothing I can recommend about this movie; but it is worth mentioning that the music is absolutely terrible. It almost made me laugh in some scenes: think silent movie and a piano playing along with it, telling you when you should feel alarm, sorrow, or anything else. This butterfly never even gets airborne.
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