Told with somewhat of a Notebook like frame, the movie Chaos Theory begins just before the wedding of Frank Allen's (Ryan Reynolds) daughter Jesse (Matreya Fedor). As she gets ready to walk down the isle, Frank's soon-to-be son-in-law Ed (Mike Erwin) worries that he's about to make the biggest mistake of his life. But as the self-appointed guard of all back doors, instead of letting Ed out for a bit of fresh air, Frank sits Ed down and tells him a story that begins with truth, ends with forgiveness, and explores exactly what it means to live and love everywhere in between.

The story he tells is about him and his wife Susan (Emily Mortimer). It is the story of the night they decided they would get married, the day their marriage became much more complicated than they ever imagined, and the night when Frank came to the conclusion he now shares with the young man before him. It is a journey that explores the reality of control, chaos, chance, and choice, and how exactly love might fit into the middle of a world in which they all coexist.

We first meet the younger Frank and Susan at a New Year's Eve party. They are not yet together, but after a late night cocktail of resolution and chance, they leave as soon-to-be husband and wife. Seven years later they are married with a young daughter. And although their life together began with one of the most uncalculated and under-analyzed decision making processes I have ever seen, the life we step into is perhaps the most overanalyzed and over-calculated life I have ever seen.

The author of The Five Minute Efficiency Trainer, Frank lives a life of total control and planning. For those people who love the feeling you get when you cross things off your to-do list and feel a sense of power as you schedule every single minute of your day, Frank would be your hero. As he tells the audience at one of his seminars, "The relationship between time and you is one of slave and master." To properly live life is to take control. "Life cannot be based on a whim," he tells his eager listeners. "Those who fail to control whim are controlled by it."

But as life would have it, the very same day of the seminar is also the day Frank loses control. A slight shift in his carefully planned schedule sets him off balance. His lack of balance throws him into several bizarre situations that were never a part of his plan. And after his wife's call to his hotel room is answered by a woman's voice and the call that narrowly beats him home leaves her with a message about his newborn baby, let's just say Frank's goal to give a good talk and return home to his family is thrown slightly off course.

Although Frank initially clings to his system of control to try get his life back in order, when that system leads him right into the biggest surprise yet, he goes off the deep end. In a matter of seconds, every belief he has ever had about his ability to control his life is undone. And so, throwing the system of logic and planning that has so obviously failed him out the window, he decides that his life would be better left up to complete chance. As he tells his friend Buddy (Stuart Townsend), he is finally free. But as funny as it is to watch him streaking across a hockey rink because a note card he drew out of stack told him too, that "freedom" leads him nowhere and he is inevitably brought back to the reality that even a life that cannot be completely controlled still needs meaning.

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