No film is a 10 if you need a manual to go with it.

Rating: 7/10 (4 March 2007)

The problem with Donnie Darko is that you cannot really understand this movie without either buying the director's cut version or finding a website to explain the point. Supposedly the real plot had to do with tangential universes. Unfortunately, you can't figure this out on your own. The director of this movie actually wrote out about 10 pages of the 'Philosophy of Time Travel' book that Donnie is given, and you can find these pages to be read on the internet, as well as on the DVD. You can't really understand this movie without glancing at those pages, or having the movie explained to you in some other way, and I have a problem with that. Though I'm not saying that a movie can't be good if you don't understand it the first time (I actually enjoyed having to watch it a few times to understand it), I was disappointed with the fact that it was only after reading a list of questions/answers about the plot and subplot did I understand what the director was trying to say. That's kind of disappointing...a film isn't really that great if you need extensive explanation on its meaning. I think the director assumed that his audience would be able to understand too much with no explanation of what was going on.