Review: Donnie Darko

[da]

Working my way through my movie to-watch list: I learned about Donnie Darko when I asked imdb for favourite cult films. The title totally didn't ring a bell for me. If it doesn't for you either, that's probably because its North American release date was October 2001, and it involves airplane parts crashing into a building. It had a poor theatre opening here.

However, it apparently played really strongly in the UK, and 2002 saw artist nutbars going around stenciling scary rabbit silhouettes all over the place.

I'm not going to summarize the plot. It involves time-travel, psychosis, destiny, teen love (with a slightly younger Jake Gyllenhaal), 80s music, skewering inspirational speakers (Patrick Swayze!), and, it must be said, a very Lolita-esque school band. Reading the wikipedia and imdb pages helped a bit after I saw it the first time; the amount of fan-exegesis of this movie is... well, it is what the Internet does best.

I liked it enough to watch a second time to tie up the loose ends (and replay some wonderful bits of dialogue. Favourite: "I heard they found feces all over the school." "What are feces?" "Baby mice." "Awwwwww.")

I like the overall magical-realism feel, as well as the dark humour, and I like the ending-credits song ('Mad World', a somewhat dark song written by Tears for Fears). The story is... clever. And occasionally maddeningly opaque.

[Edit: I saw the Director's Cut, which is supposed to be the better version.]

Comments

[chezmax]

I had heard that Donnie Darko was some sort of cult film, and had picked it up at Sunrise or HMV or something for like $8. It's one of my favourite movies, despite being a bit of a mind-fuck. :)

The version of Mad World done in the credits is covered by Gary Jules, and is a very different feel then the original :)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

You know, I've not heard the original version. Which probably loses me all my 80s cred points, but oh well. When I get the time I'll go look it up.

I don't know if I'll say it's one of my favourites... ask me in a year, after it's settled a bit. Right now, I'm thinking seeing it twice might have just been enough. :)