one of "those movies"...

Rating: 5/10 (10 November 2005)

After seeing it twice now, I've come to the conclusion that "Donnie Darko" is a conundrum--but a conundrum even the most disciplined philosophical mind wouldn't want to ponder. Writer-director Richard Kelly's tale of a psychologically disturbed boy (the title character, played with remote detachment by Jake Gyllenhaal) with the ability to see through time and space, aided by a creepy rabbit-faced entity, is simply too ambitious for its own good. It has a lot of worthwhile ideas and characters going for it, but their realization usually only reaches the halfway point, thus transforming the film into an underwhelming, frustrating experience. Though it addresses issues of mortality and fate, the emotional tone could have been lifted from any number of "Teens-Coming-Of-Age" movies (the presence of Jena Malone made me recall the much better "Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys"). Perhaps the director's cut fleshes out some of the weaker threads of plot, but I'm not curious enough to find out. I won't fault "Donnie Darko" for going in a different direction that most teen-oriented films, but "12 Monkeys Meets Ghost World" is quite a stunt to pull off, and nothing here comes close.