Don't Be Ashamed To Say It's Not A Masterpiece

Rating: 6/10 (6 August 2005)

I've heard so much about this " Wonderful , mind blowing masterpiece " . Interestingly enough most of the rave reviews of DONNIE DARKO came via this very website which goes against the grain of other reviewers . Roger Ebert only gave the movie two and a half stars while many other websites dedicated to film reviews claim this movie is confused and overrated . It should also be mentioned that if it's such a great , thought provoking piece of cinema then why did it miss out on so many nominations at the more prestigious film award ceremonies ? And don't say politics , an independent feature like IN THE BEDROOM didn't pick up any Oscars but that didn't stop it being nominated for several
DONNIE DARKO is by no means terrible but it is overrated . Dare I say it's a case of the emperors new clothes ? That is people are somewhat embarrassed upon seeing this film and not understanding it that they feel they must praise it in order to spare their supposed ignorance . Let me ask you this - What genre of film is this ? Everyone will give a slightly different answer I'm sure and if an audience is undecided about the genre then how can they decide what the ending is about ?
And there is a quite serious plot hole involved in the story . Donnie sees a demonic rabbit called Frank throughout the movie who tells him at exactly what moment the world will end . Wormholes , time warps etc may actually exist in scientific reality as may the ending but the central plot does not since the whole movie rests on Frank or Donnie being able to see into the future and no scientist will claim there's any scientific basis for fortune telling . So you see it's not really about time travel , it's about mysticism , predestination and other superstitious mumbo jumbo which Richard Kelly is using to fool the audience . In effect this movie is one big cheat and most people have failed to notice this
Having said that Richard Kelly does deserve some credit for making a movie that's not about car chases and explosions , this is a movie dealing with teen angst and the dark side of middle American small town values but Kelly has missed an opportunity to make the most of the potential . I know the film was released before the war on terror so there'd be little need to see news broadcasts on the fall out of the original Gulf war but from a pop culture point of view wouldn't this have been better set in the early 1990s when grunge culture was the rage instead of 1988 ? I mean what music best suits this movie's atmosphere ? Echo And The Bunnymen or Nirvana ? In fact if it had have set in the presidential elections of early 1990s this would have coincidentally tied in with what's going on in the world today with Saddam and Iraq getting a mention ! And wouldn't this movie be held up in superstitious awe now ?
As it stands it's nowhere as clever as it thinks it is for the reasons outlined . Perhaps Mr Kelly started out on with two movies , one a high concept science fiction thriller and the other a low concept drama about a mentally ill teenager and decided to merge the two with not too successful results . Watching DOnnie Darko this was the gut feeling I got