Obscure and pretentious sci-fi semi-thriller; the box office was bad, but a loyal cult grossly overrates it

Rating: Null/10 (14 February 2007)

The satire is strained and self-satisfied. The scene where the title character berates his teacher for having too simplistic a philosophy sounds like adolescent score-settling.
The plotting is dreary. Just when things are about to get exciting, the pace slackens and we have to wait several minutes for things to pick up again.
The realistic touches are unbearable. The dinner table banter between brother and sister? The boorish friends' conversation about Smurfs? The dialogue for these scenes is listed on IMDb's "memorable quotes" page. Why? We have this half-formed idea that lame insults, or over-serious debates about pop culture refuse, are somehow "ironic." And that anything realistic is worth inserting into a movie.
Yet, by the end of "Donnie Darko" I was somewhat won over. I enjoyed the complicated plot twists, some of the strange images and Michael Andrews's splendid electronic score. But the small cult that champions this film grossly overrates it.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a paranoid schizophrenic named Donnie Darko, who gets along badly with his family, with his teachers and with his classmates; but he does manage to find a sympathetic friend in Gretchen (Jena Malone), who agrees to date him; and he has a compassionate psychiatrist (Katharine Ross), who discovers hypnosis is the means to unlock hidden secrets. His other companion may not be a true ally. Donnie has a friend named Frank, who is either a large purple bunny, or man in a large purple bunny costume. Either way, Donnie is the only one who can see him.
Richard Kelly, who wrote, directed and created a webpage to explain everything in a tantalizingly opaque way, seems to think he's being a lot deeper than he is. This is one of those movies that inspire obsessed fans to demand that you see the film many times over, study the obsessed fans' websites about the movie, become an expert on the movie—and only then are you allowed to say you don't like it. Except, in their circular reasoning, not liking it is a sign you haven't studied it enough.
This is not "Hamlet." Much of the opacity of this movie is the result of sloppiness and pretentiousness. Take the engine that falls off the plane and destroys Donnie's room. Kelly seems to want to leave open the possibility that much of what's happening is all in Donnie's mind and that there is a rational explanation for everything. If so, why present us with an undeniably supernatural event? The plane literally comes out of nowhere.
Does the above criticism reveal that I don't get it? Nothing about the movie inspires me to delve deeper into its mystery. I was somewhat entertained, but its cult can have it.