Donnie Dorko

Rating: 4/10 (10 April 2002)

This movie's aspect of being dark and deep is all pretense; the plot is a convoluted and non-sequitur growth, but without any compelling central matrix for the ideas to root.
Noah, Barrymore and Swayze have thankfully minor roles, the first two give especially poor B movie performances.
But it is Jake's performance who is at the center of this mess, and his jerky, schizophrenic performance may have been intentional, but simply doesn't work, though he does have a few moments standing up for life's complexity vice the love-fear model.
Yet it is the plot which brings this movie down. Unlike Memento, Sliding Doors, Groundhog's Day, or even the Prince of Darkness, which use the nuances of a time continuum slyly, Donnie Darko succeeds in knotting up the stream of time. Hawking's ideas for spatial wormholes is weakly presented, but they have no direct connection to time travel.
Altogether this movie is a sloppy mix of 12 Monkeys, It's A Wonderful Life, Magnolia, Harvey, the Abyss and a pinch of ET. An eerie blend, for sure, and many may mistake the remix as originality.