Donnie Darko Review Essay
Donnie Darko: A Review
What comes to mind when you think of a modern adolescent coming of age movie? Is it alienation, rebellion, probably first love? In Donnie Darko (2001), writer/director Richard Kelly employs all of these familiar themes; then he adds humor, witty satire, time travel, apocalyptic prophecy, and a bi-pedal, six foot tall nightmare of a rabbit, who instructs the young and confused Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) through haunting visions and an eerie voice that runs through Donnie‘s head. Ok, so maybe this sounds like a plotline lifted straight from the WB's primetime lineup (minus the wit), but Kelly uses these seemingly absurd, unrelated elements to create an amazingly complex and clever story that Buffy could only dream of.
Donnie Darko begins with a panoramic, morning shot of a mountain range, setting the stage for a film as wide open as the landscape. The camera pans around, focusing slowly on a distant figure, lying unconscious in the middle of a mountain road. The silence is broken only by soft, sporadic blue notes, echoing from a piano. As the camera …show more content…
I am not talking about the usual, “break-the-suspense” humor that gets one chuckle at most. While laughs occur sporadically throughout the film, the funniest moments are between Donnie and his two dimwitted friends. They provide a blazingly blatant, juvenile humor, including a conversation about the reproductive tendencies of Smurfs and their play-by-play commentary on Grandma Death, a frightening old woman who walks back and forth to her mailbox all day long. A more satirical humor is found in the characters of Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze), an over-the-top self-help guru, and Kitty Farmer (Beth Grant), the overtly Christian gym teacher who is his devout follower. But don't get the wrong idea. While some scenes will make you laugh out loud, others will be sure to haunt your nightmares for weeks to
What comes to mind when you think of a modern adolescent coming of age movie? Is it alienation, rebellion, probably first love? In Donnie Darko (2001), writer/director Richard Kelly employs all of these familiar themes; then he adds humor, witty satire, time travel, apocalyptic prophecy, and a bi-pedal, six foot tall nightmare of a rabbit, who instructs the young and confused Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) through haunting visions and an eerie voice that runs through Donnie‘s head. Ok, so maybe this sounds like a plotline lifted straight from the WB's primetime lineup (minus the wit), but Kelly uses these seemingly absurd, unrelated elements to create an amazingly complex and clever story that Buffy could only dream of.
Donnie Darko begins with a panoramic, morning shot of a mountain range, setting the stage for a film as wide open as the landscape. The camera pans around, focusing slowly on a distant figure, lying unconscious in the middle of a mountain road. The silence is broken only by soft, sporadic blue notes, echoing from a piano. As the camera …show more content…
I am not talking about the usual, “break-the-suspense” humor that gets one chuckle at most. While laughs occur sporadically throughout the film, the funniest moments are between Donnie and his two dimwitted friends. They provide a blazingly blatant, juvenile humor, including a conversation about the reproductive tendencies of Smurfs and their play-by-play commentary on Grandma Death, a frightening old woman who walks back and forth to her mailbox all day long. A more satirical humor is found in the characters of Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze), an over-the-top self-help guru, and Kitty Farmer (Beth Grant), the overtly Christian gym teacher who is his devout follower. But don't get the wrong idea. While some scenes will make you laugh out loud, others will be sure to haunt your nightmares for weeks to