Synopsis

This angst-ridden teen drama traces the unlikely adventures of Donnie Darko, a high schooler who's visited by an ominous, possibly imaginary friend-- a six-foot tall rabbit who delivers apocalyptic messages. A staggering number of plot elements are part of the bizarre mix-from teen madness to time travel-which coheres at the conclusion.

26 year-old Richard Kelly makes his feature film directorial and screenwriting debut with Donnie Darko, a provocative, kaleidoscopic journey through 1980s suburbia with a time-traveling twist. Kelly recently graduated from the University of Southern California and previously directed two short films: The Goodbye Place and Visceral Matter. Donnie Darko was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival, where Kelly was lauded as one of the festival's most promising new discoveries.

The titular character in this densely-plotted, angst-ridden teen drama often finds himself waking up in unexpected places, like mountain roads or the a golf course green in his suburban neighborhood. He appears to be guided by the alien voice of a six foot tall rabbit with a monstrous skeleton head. One night, the voice steers him out of the house before a detached jet engine crashes into his room. The phantom, alien or whatever it is, saves before delivering a date of doomsday. This bizarre event is just one of many strange occurrences in writer/director Richard Kelly's ambitious and uneven first feature-deep into the film, most of the characters sprout oozy jellyfish-like special effect columns from their stomachs.

Jake Gyllenhaal, as young Donnie Darko gamely plays a angst-ridden version of Jimmy Stewart in Harvey, and he leads the audience through a complex narrative that's filtered through suggestions of madness, fantasy, time travel, teen anxiety, young love, high school hijinks and unlikely literary references--to a Graham Greene short story and Richard Adams' Watership Down. There are also a number of supporting characters-Patrick Swayze as a cheesy TV self-help maven, Drew Barrymore (who also produced) as a rather acerbic English teacher, and Katharine Ross as Donnie's oddly detached psychiatrist. The intricate whole aspires to Paul Thomas Anderson character juggling, but Kelly isn't nearly as assured.

The plot twists are tied together at the conclusion, but there's a bit too much going on here for it to be entirely satisfying. But there are promising elements here. Kelly's use wide screen compositions is often successful, and he gets wonderful performances from Gyllenhaal and Mary McDonnell as his attractive, intelligent mother who, like the audience, just doesn't always know what to make of all the crazy things that go on around her.

Glen Helfand