Seriously flawed movie

Rating: Null/10 (20 February 2002)

Donnie Darko is being praised by critics and audience members alike. When I first heard about it I was very excited; it sounded as if it would be an off-beat and breathtakingly original film. But when I finally got the chance to see it I was extremely disappointed.
The basic plot of Donnie Darko is very unique and there are some bizzare and original touches throughout. The overall execution,however, is, simply put, not very good.
One of the most prominent flaws of Donnie Darko is its humour, an aspect of the film that, as far as I can tell, was designed to support and contribute to the strange atmosphere that the filmmkakers attempted to create. The humour, though, in my opinion, is terrible. It is, more often than not, juvenile and in no way, clever. For example, a scene that is supposed to be funny but fails miserably, is the dinner scene near the beginning where the humour is based around Donnie Darko and his sister swearing at each other. This type of comedy, which is often vulgar and which would be much more appropriate for the teen comedies released in recent years, characterizes much of the movie; it never becomes offensive but is just terribly unoriginal and completely lacking in wit.
Another major flaw of Donnie Darko is that it falls into so many standard cinematic cliches. There is the horribly contrived aspect of the movie in which Donnie and his fellow classmates study a story in school that mirrors the themes and situations being developed within the film. There is nothing wrong with including a work of art in a movie that somehow connects to what is taking place on screen--in fact, it can sometimes be illuminating (in this case it is not)-- but in Donnie Darko, this is done in such a standard and unoriginal way; the classroom scenario has been done in countless other movies. Even more detrimental to the movie are the scenes that take place between Donnie Darko and his therapist. These scenes are sometimes laughably bad, especially when Donnie is hypnotized. But worse, these scenes utilize cliched and ridiculously silly psychobabble that so many movies employ. The psychological aspects of the film and of Donnie Darko's character are supposed to be extremely important to all that takes place; unfortunately, they are not developed properly at all during the scenes in which they should. These are just a few examples of the traps that Donnie Darko falls into.
There are, admittedly, some parts of Donnie Darko that should be commended; the plot, for example, takes some interesting turns.However, the humour in this movie seems so out of place and and there are countless cliches that should have and could have been avoided. Because of these flaws, among others, Donnie Darko never achieves that off-beat and original atmosphere it seemed to want and ends up being a very disapointing experience.