Strange and Beautiful (and funny)

Rating: 10/10 (26 November 2002)

After waiting way to long to see this movie, its questions and amazing performance by Jake Gyllenhaal still cling to my thoughts days later.
DD is a genre flouting cross between Jacob's Ladder, Twin Peaks and Pretty N Pink. The biggest reason to see this piece is Jake Gyllenhaal. His astonishingly subtle and layered performance of Donnie Darko is what drives the rest of the movie's intensely different plot and makes it credible. In the hands of a less skilled actor..this movie would go from thought provoking to camp in no time flat. Donnie Darko is a troubled teenager, possibly going mad, trying to deal with adolescence in the late go-go 80's. He lives in suburbia utopia hell with his parents and sisters. Plagued by mental illness and a past criminal record, Donnie is in therapy. Jake Gyllenhal's Donnie is beautiful, sad, sinister and goofy all at the same time. He has been informed of the end of the world by a giant imaginary rabbit who diverts Donnie from and untimely death. In exchange Donnie must follow the rabbit's orders...after that the plot becomes continually strange and twisted and you are left wondering if Donnie is mad, awake, asleep or hallucinating...or perfectly sane and touched by God or other higher powers. There is a romantic sub plot involving the talented Jena Malone which makes Donnie more sympathetic and tragic at the same time. He is the flawed hero and Gyllenhaal is intensely charismatic conveying that aspect. While this film is not for everyone, it is thought provoking, well writing and well made...and very strange. That's what I liked about it.and the jokes about the smurfs.