Donnie Darko can be explained in one line… But I won’t say it. It is weird, but in a good weird. It has good child actors like the lead, Jake Gyllenhaal. But where this film falters are the adult actors.
Jake does messed-up, creepy, psychotic boy very well. A psychologically disturbed boy, Donnie Darko sees an evil-looking bunny telling him to destroy certain properties. Explaining any more than that might cause even bigger spoilers than some might want to know. It is kind of a sick, evil, dark version of Harvey in a very generic sense. Almost like Harvey on drugs.
But this movie really is fun and it has some great moments in it. The kids, however, are what move this film along, not the script or the adult actors. The back of the DVD case said “An All Star Cast”, but what that means is “A Cast Of Well Known Names, But They Are All Crappy.” These actors are the likes of Drew Barrymore (please don’t swear, you make my ears bleed when you do that) and Patrick Swayze (dude, you are not that great, you do not do charming well, and your brainwashing tactics wouldn’t work on a ten year old girl). Jake Gyllenhaal’s real life sister, Maggie (The Dark Knight) is also really good, as is Jena Malone (Into the Wild and Contact) who plays Donnie’s girlfriend.
There is one other factor that I must state: the dialogue in the film is very weak. It is short, choppy, silly at times, and in all honesty, it sounds sometime like a junior higher wrote it. The concept is great and the director and writer Richard Kelley came up with a great concept for the film, but he should have gotten someone else to write the film. It was just plain sloppy.
Anyway, I would defiantly recommend this film.
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