Crazy mixed up kid, crazy mixed up movie

Rating: 3/10 (28 November 2007)

Too weird for me, I'm afraid. Very "Twin Peaks", by which I mean, beguiling to the eye, challenging in parts but ultimately just too confusing and abstract for my sensibilities. The acting's fine, Jake Gyllenhaal in his breakthrough role as the disturbed teenager from whose perspective everything goes crazy, Jena Malone as the even more sensitive new girl in school with whom Donnie finds a kindred spirit and some established actors in unexpected roles, like Patrick Swayze, Katharine Ross and co-producer Drew Barrymore. The early 1980's soundtrack featuring the dark and brooding Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen and Tears for Fears chimes in well with Donnie's gloomy psychosis, but I could sit here for hours and still not précis the plot so I won't even try. Perhaps it's all in the words of the Tears for Fears song "Mad World" played at the movie's end - "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had". An arresting line and, maybe for a few minutes, an interesting thought but, for me, not enough to hang a movie on.