Donnie Darko is one freaky-ass movie. Imagine David Lynch reworking a John Hughes script, or remaking Harvey but with the James Stewart character as a psychotic schizophrenic instead of a harmless eccentric (actually, Darko is sort of an evil twin of another James Stewart movie, but I can't tell you which one because it might give away the plot). I decided to see this movie after reading a review that said it had a "rabbit-demon named Frank" and also gave a shout out to The Evil Dead. (Coincidentally, I happen to be reading Bruce Campbell's autobiography right now, so the brief Evil Dead clip was fun to watch, even if all you see is the cabin and Sam Raimi's "classic" car.) If you have a rabbit-demon, if you name it "Frank," and if you salute The Evil Dead, you're cool in my book.
Donnie Darko is definitely one of those love-it-or-hate-it movies. It's extremely original and bizarre, and linear storytelling goes out the window early on. I got caught up in the movie and therefore enjoyed it (I should add that I had a margarita before the movie, which probably didn't hurt), but it would be very easy to get lost. I don't pretend to understand all of it, but I didn't waste much time trying to puzzle things out; I just let the movie take me where it wanted. Amazingly, this is the debut film from writer-director Richard Kelly (almost as amazingly, Drew Barrymore produced it, which vastly improves my estimation of her).
Jake Gyllenhaal (October Sky) is the title character, a heavily medicated, sarcastic, yet fundamentally sweet boy inhabiting the same soulless suburbia that afflicted American Beauty, only in 1988 (though it doesn't pound the '80s thing into the ground, the movie does unfortunately raise the specters of Duran Duran -- Donnie's little sister dances in a group called "Sparkle Motion," where she dresses in silver lycra and shakes her prepubescent body to "Notorious" -- and Tears for Fears). Donnie is dealing with the usual teen angst: girlfriend, high school, parents, schizophrenia, time travel. And Frank, the six-foot-tall rabbit-demon who seems, paradoxically, to appear whenever Donnie takes his medication. Gyllenhaal is terrific, and the supporting cast is good, too -- Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne as his bemused but caring parents, Gyllenhaal's real-life sister Maggie as Donnie's older sister (who torments her father by threatening to vote for Dukakis), and judicious cameos from Drew Barrymore, Noah Wyle, and an unctuous Patrick Swayze.
The movie is dark but not without humor. If nothing else, it's certainly unlike anything else you've seen this year. I didn't understand the ending at first, but once things clicked with me, I found it very moving.
I usually give an audience rant, but I have to give a rave: A couple started to sit in front of us, and then the man suggested to his wife that they switch places so that she would be sitting in front of me instead of him (he was about a foot taller than she). I was so stunned by this courtesy that I could barely squeak "Thank you."
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