Donnie Darko
Movie Review
"Donnie Darko"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: C-
Rating: R
Released: Friday, October 26, 2001
Directed by:
Cast:
I'm predicting "Donnie Darko" will be the year's most overrated film. It smells like the kind of movie that wants you to think it's really deep, causing people to claim they loved it even though they actually found it incomprehensible.
I defy you to tell me what this movie is about and point out portions of it to support your theory. It's occasionally about the opposite emotions of love and fear and what falls in between them, but it's also sometimes about fate and predestination. For that matter, sometimes it's a character study, and other times it's a science-fiction time-travel fantasy. But it is none of these things long enough or with enough commitment to develop any of them. As a result, it's a mish-mash of disparate, non-cohesive ideas, the sort of film that thinks it's brilliant just because no one understands it.
Maddeningly, it also has a lot going for it. Jake Gyllenhaal (who you loved if you saw "October Sky") plays the title character, an upper-class suburban high-schooler beset with visions of a human-size demon rabbit (the anti-Harvey, I guess) who tells him to do things like flood the school and set fire to people's houses. Gyllenhaal gives a wonderful, brooding performance, lending realism to a character surrounded by surrealism.
There are some delicious characters, too, including Patrick Swayze as a lugubrious self-help guru (think Tom Cruise in "Magnolia," only more grating) and Mary McDonnell as Donnie's concerned mother. Katharine Ross as Donnie's therapist and Holmes Osbourne as his dad turn in expert performances, too. (Ignore Drew Barrymore, who is stilted and weird as Donnie's English teacher, and who I'm guessing got the part because she executive produced the thing.)
It has a glorious soundtrack, too, as it's set in 1988 and uses several great popular songs from that year. (Any movie that opens with INXS's kickin' "Never Tear Us Apart" has something going for it, as far as I'm concerned.) There's also quite a bit of witty, entertaining dialogue.
But back to the story. Frank the devil rabbit regularly makes Donnie get up in the middle of the night and wander around town. One such evening, he tells Donnie that the world will end in a few weeks. Shortly after he tells him this, a jet engine mysteriously falls from the sky and crashes through Donnie's bedroom. Had Frank not led Donnie out of it, he would certainly have been killed. Now Donnie knows to trust the prophetic Frank, or something.
This includes suddenly becoming more assertive than he's ever been, telling off his witchy gym teacher, as well as the aforementioned self-help idiot. He gets a girlfriend, too, a new student named Gretchen (Jena Malone).
Frank keeps asking Donnie if he believes in time travel, so Donnie asks his science teacher (Noah Wyle) about it. He lends him a book that happens to have been written, years ago, by the local 100-year-old crazy woman, who spends her days walking from the middle of the street to her mailbox and back again. Donnie begins to see forward into time, sort of: He can see a gel-like trail leading from people's chests toward wherever they're about to go, thus giving him the skill of knowing someone's about to walk across the room before they actually do. (Why this is a skill, I don't know. I also don't know why Donnie can only do it every now and then.)
Will the world end the day after Halloween, as predicted by Frank? If so, what can Donnie do about it? How do time travel and the senile mailbox-tender relate to it all? Why the occasional harping on hypocrisy as it pertains to Swayze's character and others? What does Frank the rabbit represent? Whatever the symbol is, is it totally undermined by the revelation of Frank's real-life basis?
These questions, and many others, are raised but not answered. In fact, they're barely even addressed. The ending is most perplexing. One can almost see Donnie as a hero or a savior, except that the way things turn out is monstrously confusing, making us second-guess the entire film.
"Donnie Darko" is not boring, I'll give it that. High-caliber performances and unusual goings-on keep it interesting. But it's the sort of "interesting" that also makes us enjoy dreaming when we sleep: Anything can happen, and it's fun to continue watching just to see where it goes. You can read a lot into it if you want, but chances are you're looking for depth where there is none.
(Note: When the film premiered at Sundance, it had the INXS song in it, as mentioned in this review. From what I'm told by approximately 50 billion "Donnie Darko" fans who write to tell me how wrong I am about the movie, however, the song was replaced with something else for its subsequent theatrical release. Be assured, the removal of the INXS song does not impact my review; if anything, it make me like the film even less.)
Grade: C-
Rated R, frequent harsh profanity, some vivid sexual imagery, some violence
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 8 comments
December 5, 2006 at 1:41 pm
The movie can seem to be trying to add depth, when in reality it's just forwarding what needs to happen. I've only seen the director's cut, so I don't know about the original. But in the director's cut, the reason everything is happening seems to be very clear, to me at least. The only reason everything is happening the way it is, is because a tangent universe has been created, which will destroy the world causing the manipulated dead (Frank) to appear to the living receiver (Donnie) to do certain things to manipulate the living (everyone Donnie knows) in order to create a portal to go back in time to stop the tangent universe from being created. And on the way we are asked questions and blah blah blah. But that is really the reason anything that happens in the film happens. Such as, Donnie floods the school, leading to bitchy lady complaining about the english assignment, leading to english teacher getting fired, leading to her leaving her mark with her favorite quote (cellar door) allowing Donnie to know where he needs to go; or, Donnie burns pervert's house down, leading pervert to be arrested for hidden child porn, leading to bitchy lady not being able to go to starsearch with the kids, leading to Donnie's mother to have to go, leading to Donnie and his sister throwing a party, leading to Frank getting drunk, leading to Frank running over Gretchen, leading to Donnie killing Frank, leading to Frank becoming the Manipulated Dead and the portals being opened up. It's very farfetched when put down like that, but it's done in such a way that it seems very natural and real.
December 5, 2006 at 7:56 pm
I've only ever seen the director's cut, too, but it was all clear as mud to me. The plot seemed deliberately obfuscated and labyrinthine. And then the closing song was Gary Jules' "Mad World," which has kind of made me like the movie in retrospect, even though I didn't like it while I was watching it.
March 18, 2007 at 6:23 pm
i watched the movie and jake gyllenhaal was so good and everybody seemed to wored really hard
June 12, 2007 at 3:05 pm
well, i'm not sure if i can sum it up in a way other than the one's above me could, but if you've only watched the regular donnie darko, see the director's cut. i really had to watch it twice to fully understand, but the regular movie leaves holes. the director's cut makes it clear. like why donnie see's the path's of other people. the living reciever is often blessed with powers. it shows flashes of roberta sparrow's book and also dialouge that makes it very clear. give donnie another chance.
November 10, 2007 at 11:50 am
I've seen both versions but I prefer the original version in a way because it leaves gaps for you to think about for yourself... I actually love this film even though I'm not sure if it makes sense it depends what way you think about it. I think its a great first film for Richard Kelly =]
November 23, 2007 at 2:29 am
C- is way too harsh - even if you don't understand the plot (and it certainly did have its holes; why the hell did Donnie need to do what he did in the end instead of, say, not setting off the chain of events that led to tragedy?), it's still very well-shot, and has some seriously hilarious scenes. Swayze was excellent. Certainly very pretenious, but it's good enough to make up for it. Still don't quite understand why Drew Barrymore had to be in the movie - her character didn't really do much. I guess I could point out a few more silly things about the movie, but I will say that I've never been glued to the screen more than during this movie - the first time I saw it, I had to leave somewhere near the end, and was pretty upset about it; there's so many weird things going on, and I had to know how it would end! Okay, so the end was confusing and stupid and explained little, but it's such a great movie up to that point. I agree with the above posters - it seems like there's a lot more to the plot than just what you see. Could have been 20-30 minutes LONGER, actually. I'd say A- or B+ territory.
December 29, 2007 at 8:06 am
Sorry I haven't whipped out my dictionary in explanation like everyone else, but I thought the fact that the film gave the illusion it was deep was the purpose of the whole thing. And maybe I drink too much as I was doing when I saw the original, but I thought Donnie was actually killed in the crash and so the film showed that the death of Donnie at the start, which was changed by Frank, for the parallel imaginative journey aspect, allowed us to see that people who die under tragic circumstances may turn out to be annoying crazy people who may go on to be the focus of a crappy movie ---- kind of like this crappy movie. If you didn't notice, I don't like this movie. I think it is crappy.
Sorry to taint an intelligent discussion with this simple comment, but it is to me the best and quickest way to get my point across.
January 22, 2008 at 6:05 am
"It smells like the kind of movie that wants you to think it's really deep, causing people to claim they loved it even though they actually found it incomprehensible."
~ Amen to that. The movie deserves a D-