One of the best EVER
This is a movie that is hard to categorize. On the face of it, it's a high school movie, about the intelligent kid who feels alienated, about awkward teenage romance, bullies, etc.
But that's just the tiniest bit of the surface.
A layer deeper is the skull-faced, six-foot-tall bunny rabbit waking you up and leading you on walks in the middle of the night, telling you to commit awful acts, and telling you exactly when the world is going to end (28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds), and what you have to do in order to save all the ones you love from this great danger...
Then, there's time travel, the sovereignty of God, and how that relates to time travel, personal responsibility, and how the tiniest decision can have the most gigantic and devastating effects on the people closest to you.
At this point, you wouldn't be blamed for feeling that this movie has too many plots, too many thematic elements, that it's too ambitious.
But you'd be wrong.
This movie is way way WAY too intelligent, challenging, and thought-provoking for the ordinary movie-goer. This movie encourages thought and introspection, instead of spoon-feeding easy and trite answers.
Although it was a spectacular FLOP at the box office (right at $600,000 in the WHOLE USA), it has since become a rather big hit across the pond, and now is a genuine underground cult classic here in the USA.
This is a fantastic movie in which everything means something, everything ties together, and it needs to be seen at least 5 times. It also stands up to repeat viewings because there are NO flick flubs, no continuity mix-ups, and therefore, you can watch it many, many times, and get something new each time, because this is not one of those movies that works the first time only...it all agrees with itself, and stands up to intense scrutiny. Unbelievably, it is the first work of director Richard Kelly, who was 26 at the time of the production. UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE! It's made all the more believable, and easier to suspend your disbelief, by the fact that this is the first BIG role for almost all of the actors in the movie, including Jake Gyllenhall, AND his real-life sister, Maggie, who plays his sister in the movie. The actors aren't thoroughly typecast, so it is much more easy to believe and enjoy the movie.
This movie will trouble you, make you really chew on it, creep you out, and THOROUGHLY entertain you, beginning to end, top to bottom. If you find that you cannot figure out the movie, go to the special features, go to the book "The Philosophy Of Time Travel", and read it. This will solve the mystery for you, or you can read the essays found when searching for "Donnie Darko Meaning" (Google that), and you can blend them together for a good idea of the point of the movie. OR, you can just watch it about a dozen times. It's really THAT GOOD. NO JOKE. Get it. Watch it. It'll really deliver the goods. I cannot be emphatic enough.
On a scale of 1 to 10, it certainly is a 9.7, without a doubt.Read full review
