Too many questions, too few answers

Rating: 5/10 (27 August 2004)

Being a college student in Virginia when Donnie Darko was released, I heard about how marvelous it was from every pretentious and self-aggrandizing intellectual I knew. But when even my close friends said it was a great film, I made it a Blockbuster night and watched it one summer evening. After certain scenes, I would skip back and watch them again, to make sure I grasped all of the themes going on in the film. And there are A LOT of things going on in this movie, too many, in fact, to make a clear statement about any of them. This is writer/director Richard Kelly's biggest mistake.
First of all, I didn't like Jake Gyllenhaal in this movie. He seemed to be weird for the sake of being weird, and his character lacked motivation to do anything short of acting on impulses. I suppose that was the point of his psychological problems, but I was more disappointed in Gyllenhaal's portrayal than the actual content of the character of Donnie. The rest of the cast did a serviceable job, Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne did a great job as Donnie's parents, but the roles played by Patrick Swayze and Drew Barrymore seem somewhat transparent; they are unimportant parts given weight by the actors' fame. I did like Noah Wyle as one of the professors who tries to relate to Donnie.
What the film tries to do, and succeeds on a certain level, is dissect middle-class life in the suburbs of Virginia. Growing up here, I can tell you that some of the elements to this movie hit very close to home. I would have loved for Kelly to cut out some of the external things going on in the film, and really focus on Donnie, his relationship with Gretchen, and what was going on with Frank and Grandma Death. But he tries to do too much, tackle it all at once, and squeeze it into 100 minutes. Everything gets attention; wealth, religion, middle-class society, youth and innocence, the nature of man, even the Washington Redskins. But what does 'Sparkle Motion' have to do with what's going on with Donnie? What does Jim Cunningham have to do with Donnie? There are some good moments including Jim, but it's just another thing to muddle the picture.
This movie is original, and thought-provoking, and that is always a good thing. But the actual content of the film lacks a direction or an edge that really makes it great. I'd be interested to see what Kelly's future projects are like. But as for 'Donnie Darko,' it's just not a complete film in my mind. If you can set aside the cult hype and accept that it's not the greatest film of all-time, you will definitely take something away from it.
5/10