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DONNIE DARKO Send This Review to a Friend
There's enough creativity in "Donnie Darko," written and directed by Richard Kelly, to make it interesting, but it is also muddled enough to make it exasperating. At heart Kelly is trying to say something about people thrashing around in suburbia. But he has wrapped the story in enough metaphysical claptrap to make David Lynch's handiwork seem like realism.
Donnie Darko, played by Jake Gyllenhaaal, is a paranoid schizophrenic teenager undergoing treatment and driving his family to distraction. He lives in his own mental world, along with his imaginary grotesque, monstrous friend Frank. On the one hand he is supposed to be thumbing his nose at the absurdities meted out at school. But let's face it--Donnie is one sick dude. The attempt to put him in the framework of time travel and metaphysical insights into the past, the future and the banality of the suburban present becomes absurd.
There is a sweetness to Gretchen (Jena Malone) as the new girl in town with an unhappy past, and she and Donnie strike a chord, but she's traveling in dangerous company. Donnie is told by Frank to do wicked things as his mind builds up to a final moment that he awaits. Under hypnosis he alarms his psychiatrist (Katharine Ross) with his revelations, and it may be too late to help him. The cast includes Drew Barrymore (also the film's executive producer) as his favorite teacher whose methods are scorned by her superior; Mary McDonnell as Donnie's loving but pained mother; Holmes Osborne as Donnie's upset dad, and Patrick Swayze as a charlatan who dispenses self-help platitudes to students.
The director wraps his film in ominous developments and eerie setups, with the occasional comic relief afforded by satirical situations. But although Kelly exhibits talent, the film is as paranoid schizophrenic as Donnie. A Newmarket films release.
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