Most Overrated Movie on IMDb

Rating: 1/10 (12 December 2006)

Completely and totally overrated.
Disjointed, silly plot, poor cinematography, plot holes big enough to drive a truck through, it is the most over-rated and over-intellectualized movie I've ever seen.
Save yourself some time: A teenager who fears death above all things, dreams of his impending death and comes to the epiphany during this dream sequence that death is nothing to fear.
Now, that's not the explanation the director gives, but I'm not even sure the director understands his own movie. There's a huge plot hole at the outset of the movie that he tries to explain his way around, but a plot hole is a plot hole is a plot hole. Notice in the trivia that Kubrick passed on this film, and there's darn good reasons.
That's it. Don't get distracted by the "time warp/paradox" discussions on the message board, the "time corruption" plot point is simply a construct for Donnie to accept his fate without fear.
The concept is novel, the execution is horrific.
The director tried to out-Kubrick Stanly Kubrick and make a story with it's own peculiar mythology (which gets tedious over-explanation during the movie), but this director missed by a mile.
Any movie which relies on it's primary schema and plot point, a book which is explained in the movie, which **explains** the movie, well, is cheap and lazy film-making. When the movie got to the part wherein the viewer is asked to read the text of the book on the screen, I thought "no, please, they're not going to do that!!" but there it was. If you think you can buy into that type of film, then give it a try. I couldn't buy it.
Good performances all round and not a bad concept, but lousy lousy lousy execution. Very clearly, there were valid reasons Kubrick chose NOT to make this movie.
I rated it 1. I would rate it -1 if that were available as a choice.