Donnie Darko Reviews

I'm obviously the only person in the world that thought this was a hyped up pile of ****! ( given a choice i'd describe this film using a lot of derogatory expletives, but then it would be censored wouldn't it?)

Wonderfully ambitious movie

So much has been said about this film already, but after seeing it I felt compelled to add my thoughts on the movie.

It is ridiculously ambitious, and this is part of what makes this movie so charming. From talk of time travel to presidential propaganda, this film is filled with social commentary and cinematic brilliance. The film has far more memorable scenes than in most films, from the hilarious Smurf conversation to Donnie’s hypnotherapy sessions.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Donnie brilliantly, portraying Donnie with self-depreciatory humour, a real sense of vulnerability and astute intelligence. His thoughts on God are a definite highlight.

Patrick Swayze is fantastically hilarious in his role as a saviour from fear figure, and adds a lot of colour to the movie. Noah Wyle and Drew Barrymore also provide enjoyable cameos. However, it is the overbearing dance-leader and backward thinking teacher who stirs the emotion in most viewers. She seems to represent Conservative America, and Donnie wonderfully exposes her simplicity when she gives her ‘teaching’ on love.

Donnie’s relationship with the new girl in town is refreshingly complex and understated, and adds something to the film when it so easily could have taken away from it.

Remarkable stuff.

Suprising!

I wasn't expecting much really - it was a 'hollywood blockbuster' and there's not many that really enthral.. but what a shock!

I was most impressed with the cleverness of the plot, which kept you guessing and even made you think when it finished, but everything else, from the style to the acting, was great too.

A good film for everyone into good films.

Lynch for kids

says it all really. Avoid

problematic but very clever.....

Much has been made of the need to'explain' this film. It is certainly open to interpretation and is multi-layered but is essentially an intellectual conundrum.

I don't want to give too much away as that would spoil the trip,(and it is a trip!!) but a basic understanding (!) of Quantum Mechanics is probably needed. Watch the film and read the Philosophy of Time Travel (not a real book but an internet invention created by the director to help the average viewer).

If you do that, the film will make more 'sense' but this is in essence the problem I had with the film. It is all very clever and brilliantly done but at the end of the film I didn't understand it. It needed this extra information detailed above for me to make any sense of the film. I think any film ultimately fails if the director needs to put information out on the web explaining what it is that he was trying to do !!

Again I don't want to spoil the film but suffice to say shocking things happen to Donnie which left me unmoved. I was, at no time engaged by the character or the film. It is all so cold and intellectual that you spend all your time intellectually working out the plot, and no time at all emotionally engaging with the characters.

So in short this films Cult status is assured and probably well deserved. I know there are internet forums dedicated to this film where the geekier members of our global community can find space to promulgate their increasingly bizzare 'explainations'. It has become, like 'The Matrix' a film that if you say you didn't enjoy you can rest assured that the critcism that you 'didn't get it' ie. are too stoopid !! will be levelled at you. I just want something different from the films I watch ......

Clever, certainly but a little to smartarse for me !!

Imagine a cross between American Beauty and the X Files, with elements of Dead Poets Society thrown in and a Twin Peaks-sized dose of weirdness, and you've got Donnie Darko. It?s the story of a teenage boy who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, which causes hallucinations - mainly in the form of a malevolent-looking 6ft bunny called Frank - that drive him to perform wanton acts of destruction. He also believes the end of the world is nigh. Very nigh. The story is told through Donnie?s eyes and the world from his perspective looks like a pretty scary place. Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie gives a compelling and believable performance ? you can really feel his suffering ? and the rest of the cast is pretty good too. I especially liked Patrick Swayze as the creepy Jim Cunningham. <p>The film is beautifully shot, with a mesmerising dreamlike quality ? it opens with a wonderful scene where we see the family going about their daily business while Donnie returns home from one of his night-time outings, with Echo &amp;amp; The Bunnymen as the soundtrack (the film is set in 1988). This sets the tone of the story and brings you up to speed very quickly ? typical of the very effective and stylish cinematic technique that characterises the whole film. As the story develops, you start to wonder where on earth (or elsewhere) it is taking you, but even if you work out what is happening, nothing prepares you for the shock of the cataclysmic ending. But despite all the fantastical paranormal elements, this is really a deeply poignant story about the suffering caused by mental illness, both to the victim and his family, and an outstanding debut from writer-director Richard Kelly.

Absolute Crap!!!!!

Forget it and watch paint dry!!! Far too deep for me, you'd have to watch it ten times to understand it!

abandoned it

weird, didn't like it

tears for jewels

If the sixth sense and the others kept you guessing right up to the end don't watch this film....you just won't be able to handle it.

If, however, you hated those films then watch this one and you too can bask in the blissful confusion that is too often denied to movie-goers with a brain.

This film is absolutely brilliant. It brought to mind the impact another film had on me 28 years ago when my voice was breaking. The hitherto unrivalled ' Slaughterhouse 5' .

Flaccid compared to release cut

Okay, rating this as a three is a bit of an over statement, and I rated the original version 7. My point being this is one of those directors' cuts that is just not as good as the final release cut. The absence of Echo and the Bunny Men from the opening credits is a poor judgement, particularly for me as that song just puts it exactly in the right timeframe.

More generally the added scenes detract firstly by making the film just a bit long and flaccid, whereas the release cut is very very tight. But worse, in indulging in a bit of 'explanation' about time-travel and tangent universes the mystery and sense of significance of the story are detracted from. With any story that gains most of its power from working on a metaphorical level - in this case particularly that feeling, certainly that I had in my teens, of being completely out of kilter with the rest of (adult) society, loses its power when it's explained what Donnie is experiencing in some kind of pseudo-scientific manner. (Like the disastrous 'explanation' of The Force in the more recent Star Wars episodes).

In summary it is still a brilliant film, and not really deserving of a 3, but my point is see the release cut and give the Directors cut a miss.