A Puzzle for puzzled people.

Rating: 2/10 (16 July 2006)

If you are young and dissatisfied with your family, if you do not have too many good friends, and you are having a feeling that the whole world is stupid, evil and against you, and you are wishing that someday you will have some special scientific power to destroy all evil and save the world..... Donnie Darko is the perfect movie for you.
Its a fairy tale cashing in on introvert teen sentiments! Surreal is not the right word, Donnie Darko is based on science. Well at least it has a few sprinkles of unexplained scientific twists here and there to help you spend a lot of time looking for logic even after the movie is over. This is an added advantage because you spend money for a two hour movie, and then wonder and discuss about it for two years. Great deal?
Well, the movie is about a boy who seems a bit retard and drowsy because of his psychotic medications. He faces his family which is not too supportive about his confusions about life. He faces friends in school who are not exactly his type. He faces other grown ups like teachers and doctors around him who do not have enough intellect to understand the depth of his mind. And everyone around him is mostly dishonest, blunt or evil to the core!
Being shy and drowsy, there was not much chance that he could find a girlfriend. But one day the most beautiful girl in school chooses him as the cutest guy in class! A perfect dream come true for a troubled teenage boy! So at last it seems like his troubled life will come to an end! But not for long....! Soon he will have to play the role of a knight in shining armor to save his girlfriend's life... and by lying down on his bed.
The director is smart! He was only 25 when he made this movie. He remembered his teenage days and the complexes that an average troubled teenage mind usually has about the grown up world. He totally cashed in on that. He added some new concept from hypothetical science to make a few parts of the movie a bit difficult (often impossible) to understand, so that the viewers do not feel its cliché, and get a subject to talk about it for years to come.
So if you are grown up and confident about yourself, you will readily figure out what this movie is trying to do. But if you are still confused about the world, you will probably love this movie, irrespective of your age!