It's Emperor's New Clothes Time!

Rating: 1/10 (23 August 2004)

SPOILERS
The people who are twisting themselves in knots trying to analyse the 'philosophy' of this movie belong in the same group as those who try to divine the meaning behind the Matrix films. Read some actual philosophy, for Christ's sake, or watch classic Art movies which engage with ideas in a coherant manner, instead of getting excited soley because a movie was made recently, marketed to your age group, and is associated with a hit single. The reality is that this is the best recent example of a pop-cultural product which is popular ONLY because it's pitched as arty and difficult to understand.
There's nothing to understand. None of the sub-plots (the infomercial guy, the *beep* about Grahame Greene, or wormholes, or the other stuff about censorship) have anything to do with the central plot about Frank, Donnie and his girlfriend. They are included to create the illusion that this movie has a message, when there is really nothing there. All of the anti-censorship arguments have been made far more effectively before, in movies dedicated to that theme; none of the other stuff links together or goes anywhere.
The plot twists in the sub-plots are all tediously obvious, as are the character's attitudes to them (like Donnie immediately seeing that Jim Cunningham is the antichrist - and look, he's found to be a pederast! Or the whole thing about Drew Barrymore's character being a saint crushed by a repressive system, or the street thug dudes, who walk into the film, gurn a bit, threaten Don with a knife, then walk out again until they're needed later). The plot twists in the main plot all come totally out of the blue by using the supernatural cop-out clause as permission for the story to go in any direction it likes. When movies like Godsend do that, everyone rightly points out how stupid it is. But then, Godsend isn't regarded as Art.

Idiots.
The worst part is the way this film wastes it's one original idea - the concept of a disturbed teenager who can see a 6' apocalyptic bunny rabbit. Wouldn't it have been great if Frank had been kept mysterious, or turned out to be some kind of demon with a direct, properly explained role in the plot? No, he takes his bunny head off halfway through, and is shown to be merely a guy in a suit who drives a car over someone at a key moment.

You need to watch more movies, people.