Overrated

Rating: 1/10 (19 July 2003)

I went into this flick because a couple different reviews and reviewers pointed me in that direction. I'm not a critic, I don't waste a lot of time disecting the bad, I prefer to spend time praising the good.
So I'll be brief.
This movie will probably appeal to the same segment who thought Blair Witch was original and good. And like Blair Witch this movie is neither. If you've opened a sci-fi book in the last fifty years, the concepts touched on are less than revolutionary, and even the mixing of disparite genres handled far better elsewhere, one movie that comes to mind is SIGNS. Or even the films of David Fincher, this idea of pieces coming together, of everything having meaning is a capable idea, in the hands of acapable script and director.

An idea that kept running through my head, triggered by certain scenes in the film, is how derivitive DONNIE DARKO is of better movies. Sometimes an ambiguous story isn't the mark of a brilliant director, and a witty script, sometimes it's just uneven filmmaking. It's just an inability to put on the stage, the ideas on the page. Many reviewers have said, well get the DVD, because the notes from the book really explain it, and I have to chuckle softly, because I realize that perhaps a movie that requires crib notes... isn't really that cohesive of a movie.
People are quick to slam hollywood movies, and praise indie movies, often simply because they are labeled "indie" movie.
Some hollywood movies are bad, some are brillant. Some Indie movies are brilliant, and some are... empty. DD is an empty movie. People argue about Tangent Universes, and Premonitional Dreams, and ultimately if a movie lacks heart, if you don't care about the characters, who cares what happens to them? Whether their world ends? And ultimately that's the failing of Donnie Darko, Drew Barrymore mentions apathy, and that descibes the failings of this flick as well as any.
You don't learn to care for the characters, so why worry about their world coming to the end? While the director shows capabiity moving the camera, the glaring/cynical looks of the lead [his distuberd/homicidal look maybe?] after the fourth or fifth glare left me hoping 10 or 12 jets fell on his head.
Condemn Hollywood movies if you choose, but like most prejudice, you condemn the good with the bad, because Hollywood at its best, its LAWRENCE OF ARABIAs, its LION IN WINTERS, its UNTOUCHABLES, its BRAVEHEARTS gives us works that speak to the heart, and I will take that any day over this new self-indulgent indie cinema that speaks only to the hubris[That said there are directors doing great things in the Indie Field, THE SWEET HEREAFTER popping immediately to mind, a movie that has all the heartrending emotional energy and interest, that this film lacks].
Donnie Darko like Blair Witch is an exercise, a preamble to a film, that would make a decent short flick on the Indie Film circuit, but blown up to feature length, the cracks shown... and the holes become... apparent.
** out of ****.