Overblown Pseudo-Intellectualism + Tangled Plotting = Ominous Mixture

Rating: Null/10 (12 August 2003)

Donnie Darko' is a film that consists mainly of overblown pseudo-intellectualism under the guise of tangled plotting. The film has garnered a bit of a cult following' for itself  mostly of the teenage demographic  probably because they consider it to be a profoundly brilliant examination of a guy who's become disillusioned by the banality and ignorance of those surrounding him with an equally brilliant sci-fi context (with a doomed love story thrown in for good measure.) I suppose I can see how those who are easily impressed could see this film in that light.

And  just to clarify  no, I don't dislike this film because I lack the intelligence to decipher the plot and/or what exactly it's trying to say. I will even acknowledge that the plot  up to a certain point  is actually quite interesting. Donnie  our protagonist  is saved from getting crushed by a jet engine when a demonic life-sized rabbit guides him out of bed. We come to realize that this rabbit is from a possible future (or an alternate reality') that Donnie must eventually alter by travelling back in time and  ultimately  saving his mother, little sister, girlfriend, and a few other characters from death.
But my biggest problem with the film is Kelly's painfully amateurish (or perhaps unintentional?) effort to mix satire into the film as well. It would've been a good idea to at least embed all of his characters with a believable degree of authenticity, but some just aren't. For instance, the school/dance teacher is so overblown with her ridiculous aversion toward Graham Greene and her idiotic fear/love' teaching lessons that she seems like nothing more than a poorly written caricature. Kelly also doesn't stray away from the cliché  an elderly person is once again presented as a pinnacle of esoteric knowledge and truth.
What did I like about Donnie Darko'? I liked Kelly's choice to set it within the interesting milieu of the 1980s  this is certainly a refreshing change from the dull modernism of most new films that look like Donnie Darko.' This provides a great backdrop for Kelly to display his eye for detail, within both dialogue and appearance. The tragic circumstances surrounding the relationship between Donnie and Gretchen are also done quite originally.
Director Richard Kelly's way of presenting events in an ill-defined way  expecting us to interpret our own grand meaning to these curiosities  isn't a good cinematic technique; it's just far too easy to simply switch your character around through time and space with pretty visuals upon the idea of time travel, expecting it to all seem appropriate in the end. Kelly tries so hard to make his film contemplative that it demands its viewers to ask far too many questions whilst it provides too few concrete answers  all theories inevitably remain objectionable. Clever ambiguousness is one thing and awkward ambiguousness is another. Unfortunately, Donnie Darko' falls under the latter category.