The Truth

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2003)

"Donnie Darko" blows. The movie is an audacious, pretentious disaster. It's an embarrassment to everyone involved and an embarrassment to everyone who sees it. Sure, there are still a few people left out there who saw the film as wide-eyed teenagers and still have the naiveté (stupidity?) to call it a good movie but this crowd is maturing with every passing day. And as the good-hearted people wake up one-by-one the little cult that kept the buzz alive grows weaker, and fewer people are subjected to this film. There is a God.
First-time director Richard Kelly gives new meaning to the phrase "biting off more than you can chew" with a movie about teenage isolation, sleep-walking, imaginary friends, self-help, rebellion, death, psychology, martyrdom, love, death, and a pivotal sequence about an elementary school dance troupe which is NOT just another excuse to play one of his favorite songs from the 80's. Oh I almost forgot- Kelly also throws in sub-plots about time-travel and alternate universes just to keep things interesting. But you won't have to do a lot of thinking to grasp these deep concepts- he didn't.
In fact Kelly doesn't seem to over-think anything at all. The movie cruises along until the baffling twist ending that simply negates everything that came before. None of it never happened. Now, we're hip to non-linear films, Dick- most people are these days. We understand stories told out of sequence, parallel narratives, mind-blowing twists... and we like them, when they're done right. But the end of Donnie Darko is what my parents would call a cop-out... just a cheap plot device to avoid making a statement or offering an idea. There's no resolution or explanation for what has come before, not an ounce of effort to provide a cohesive conclusion to what you've been watching. You will be sucked in by Donnie Darko... it's a watchable movie... and you will watch because there are interesting conflicts and because you're sure SOME if not ALL of them will be resolved...
SUCKER!!!
And that's exactly how the cult grew: intelligent moviegoers were so devastated by the film's aborted ending they reasoned there had to be more. (There isn't.) The audience insisted the story must make sense. (It doesn't.) They took to the internet, writing thesis papers and studying theories of alternate universes and time travel and eating up the director's retro-active re-writing of his script to fit the beliefs of his cult's current demographic. You could do all this work, too... or you could save yourself time...
And just flush.
GRADE: F