Review of Donnie Darko (2001) by John W — 17 Sep 2013

*THE OFFICIAL BETTER THAN DRIVE (2011) SEAL*.

The only way you will understand the plot is to read the Time Travel Book in the extras on the DVD. I bet nobody guessed near the rubbish the plot actually is....

---------- THE TRUE PLOT OF DONNIE DARKO (spoiler) ----------.

If a Tangent Universe occurs, it will be highly unstable, sustaining itself for no longer than several weeks. Artifacts provide the first sign that a Tangent Universe has occurred. The Living Receiver is chosen to guide the Artifact into position for it's journey back to the Primary Universe. The Manipulated Dead will manipulate the Living Receiver using the Fourth Dimensional Construct.

We enter the Tangent Universe when the Airplane Engine (Artifact) first appears.

Donnie (Living Receiver) has been chosen to guide the Airplane Engine back to the Primary Universe. We don't know why he is chosen.

Frank (Manipulative Dead) dies in this Tangent Universe so he is able to guide Donnie to get the Artifact in position.

---------- THE TRUE PLOT OF DONNIE DARKO (spoiler) ----------.

This Plot isn't intelligent. Creating a movie nobody would ever understand (unless its explained in a book) is not hard to do. This film is the dullest, most over-rated rubbish I've watched!

"Donnie Darko" is the end result of 47 Weekly World News headlines strewn together in random order. Over one hour and 45 minutes, it rams together time travel, a 6-foot imaginary rabbit, a Tony Robbins-esque motivational speaker with a secret (Patrick Swayze?!?), hypnotism, an elementary school dance troupe and a stray jet engine.

What does it all mean? Not much. Ham-fisted, nail-on-the-head symbolism practically smashes you in the face. A creepy fat girl dressed as an angel. A statue with a dog's head and a human body. An old woman nicknamed "Grandma Death" who keeps checking her mailbox. An eye wound. The creepy fat girl's earmuffs. Heck, one of the ending shots is an M.C. Escher drawing.

The filmmakers would also like you to marvel at their camera techniques. Look, it's tilted! Now it's going fast. Now, slow. Wait, now it's turning upside down! Aren't we creative?

So basically, you're left with a sullen Jake Gyllenhaal moping his way through someone's bad LSD-trip. By the end, you're supposed to have some great understanding of your place in the universe. But you're more likely to have a great understanding of why overwrought student films are a dime a dozen.

The director, I have no doubt, saw Donnie Darko as a superheroic, Christ-like figure who was doomed to sacrifice himself for the good of humanity. The film attempts to use magical realism to make its point. Your thinking: Never Ending Story, Star Wars, Willow... If only. I didn't like those films much either, but at least they weren't trying as hard as Donnie Darko to be internally consistent. Donnie Darko is very American, very Christian, and entirely too self-righteous in its portrayal of "truth". What's worse, it's plot has holes large enough to pass elephants through, so the filmmakers don't even have a right to act that way. In a nutshell, the plot has NO LOGICAL CONSISTENCY. The characters are undeveloped and the acting is reminiscent of a high school play. Not to mention the whole premise of the movie centers around an acceptance of "time travel" that is entirely pedestrian. Yes, modern physics speaks about time travel. No, it looks NOTHING LIKE what is presented in Donnie Darko. I wouldn't care, but they are attempting to actually present it like they are saying something along those lines. Like a B-Movie Science Fiction Flick from the 50s, the movie throws scientific and deductive ideas around without actually having researched them or patiently thinking about the consequences. I don't in principle mind when people get things wrong, but this movie comes across as a self-righteous attempt to be right. When you're trying to be right and the stuff you include can immediately be identified as eyerollingly incorrect, that's when I begin to get stomach aches. Wolfgang Pauli summed up their premise well, "That's not right. That's not even wrong." Instead the filmmaker has spent research on figuring out what the smurfs were all about. Excuse me for rolling my eyes.