I thought it was 'eh' but most of my friends love it to the point of worshipping it. It's not "deep" when you leave out crucial plot elements for no good reason. Due to this, I am forced to disagree with you. It IS relatively obscure in general, but in the pseudo-intellectual stoner college student continuum, it's greatly overrated.
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Anonymous2005-07-11 20:49
yes, its mystic at first since the story line is unnecesarily confusing but after you look up an explanation on the internet the movie is just plain boring. the movie didnt HAVE to be confusing but who ever made this decided to take a cookie cutter to the storyline. it was a nice idea with the whole causality loop thing but... that's overshadowed by how utterly boring it is.
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Anonymous2005-07-15 5:09
>>2
Yeah, I totally agree. I was expecting something amazing from what I've heard, but it's pretty much just "ooooh look at this isn't this wierd!!". I guess it has good atmosphere.
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Anonymous2005-07-19 0:10
>>2
I worshipped it when I first saw it, but then I realized it was a bunch of random shit. I still like it because of how cynical it is.
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Anonymous2005-07-19 12:00 (sage)
I saw it three times in four days when my friend let me borrow the DVD. I haven't bought it or seen it since, though I have a generally good opinion of the film.
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Anonymous2005-07-28 10:52
I don't worship this movie so don't put this post into the context that I'm one of the angry fans defending my pride or something. I'll also say now I won't go into extensive detail.
That said, you guys are missing the point of this movie. The plot is not the main focus of the story. He doesn't die on October the first at the beginning, then dies on October the first at the end, so arguably you could say the entire movie was pointless, and he could have just been hit by that jet engine at the beginning. What makes the movie intersting is all of smaller things that happen throughout the time that Donnie should have been dead. The collection of seemingly obscurities that end up completely changing the outcome of his life.
So if you read a "What really happened in Donnie Darko" online, it will be wrong, because the plot has no such summary. I'm sure many of you have seen Pulp Fiction. There was little plot in that either (Hence the title), what made the movie good was all the things in between and how they all connect.
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Anonymous2005-07-30 5:13
>>7
meh, various aspects of the movie don't interconnect in interesting ways any more with Darko than in your average episode of Seinfeld
If you read the explainations of the movie (all you really need to read is the excerpts from the book that were on the official website, I don't know the names because I saw the movie long ago) you would know that thes "seemingly obscurities" were supposed to all be results of manipulated living and dead (or whatever they're called)just have to do whatever it takes to make Donnie, the random person picked to fix time, send the jet engine into the past to fix the time rift. The plot (and entire movie) is basically summed up in that everything happened because it had too.
The problem is that nothing in the movie indicates this. This lack of explaination of a, forgive my personal judgement, retarded plot creates the faux intellectualism that so many faux intellectuals grasp on to. Whereas Pulp Fiction set up a simple but explainable plot (ex. two guys have to dispose of a dead body) and then builds the characters, interactions, and the entire movie around that, Donnie Darko gives you the cinematic equivilent of blue balls and calls it an deep plot. It is a bad movie.
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Anonymous2005-08-05 12:38 (sage)
Some filmmakers like to have the audience participate. Its more cerebral to some people. I could explain mostly everything in the film to you, but what would be the point?
>>7
I thought the plot was pretty important, but I guess the plot and Donnie's personality are intertwined.
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Anonymous2005-08-09 23:17
<Inst>
Why faux intellectualism in lieu of pseudointellectualism, which seems more common? Pseudointellectuals have co-opted the latter term to death?
Anyways, go watch French New Wave films k?
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Anonymous2005-08-11 19:42
Name some french new wave films please. I heard they inspired the pixies' music.
>>9
Irrelevent of the assumed pseudointellectual intentions of the film, it affected me which means it gets the thumbs up.
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Anonymous2005-08-14 21:47
>>9
I wouldn't say it's a "bad" movie (House of the Dead? Now THAT'S a bad movie...) but I agree with your sentiment. Everything you need to understand the story/plot of a movie should be within the film itself. Smacking your audience with a reading assignment in order to help them understand the film is pretty sloppy.
Still, I gotta admit... That was a kickass website.
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Anonymous2005-08-17 2:51
>>13
not meant seriously, but okay, let's google. Oh, 400 blows? Apparently that's well known.
>Everything you need to understand the story/plot of a movie should be within the film itself.
welcome to america, where no one thinks for himself!
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Anonymous2005-09-29 12:10
>>14
wtf. House of the Dead ROCKS. It don't take a coffee-swilling collegiate cockwad to figure out Boll's a dadaist, and the hilarity of the whole thing.
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Anonymous2005-09-29 12:12
>>1
the only good thing about it was the hot lolis' dance. /r/ GIFS plz. (hey it's in a semi-major movie so it can't be illegal.)
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Anonymous2005-10-01 10:12
In what way is Donnie Darko underrated? All the hot topic goth loltards love it.
What I liked about Donnie Darko is that it left a lot of that stuff out of the film, forcing the viewer to draw his/her own conclusion. You can make the movie whatever you believed. You could have been dead wrong, but as long as you had facts from the movie to support your claim, who could disprove you? That's what I like. There was no definite "this is what it is."
Atleast not until the Director's Cut was released. The Director's Cut does include everything within the plot, you still need to piece it all together, but it's all there.
I had seen it since so many people were blabbing about it. I was surprised how an indie film could get so famous *hacknapoleondynamite* *coughihearthuckabees*. It was a wonderful film over-all, although the "Dickies" advertising got annoying after a while.
The final result: I cried.
Waaaaa━━━━━｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡━━━━━aaaahhh!!!
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Anonymous2005-12-01 15:04
The director admitted (And reading the book) what the movie was really about, which is basically that the universe goes into a tangent, and if various people don't fulfill their duties it will crash and existence will cease. Personally I think that sucks.
He also said, however, that the movie is about "Possibilities". I'd like to believe that he made things intentionally vague so people could fill in their own, preferred back story. Most peoples' are pretty stupid, but if you can fill in something intelligent it can be enjoyed.
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Anonymous2005-12-07 3:46
good film, is really underrated but it's kinda slow moving
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Anonymous2005-12-09 22:20
not underrated (more liek overrated). my dorm has a bloody poster of it for a showing here
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Anonymous2006-01-02 20:21 (sage)
Good movie, but it sucks because it's cool to say so online.
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Anonymous2006-02-18 5:04
I'm glad that we have Donnie Darko around so that I can figure out when people are full of shit.
"Ooh I liked Donnie Darko, it was really layerd" <-- full of shit
"Yeah, you don't get it 'till you watch it a few times, or really think about it, you know?" <-- full of shit.
"It's a film that really spoke to me! I got it. . . didn't you get it?" <-- full of shit.
It's a bullshit movie with a nice 80s soundtrack, cute indi film dialogue, and a plot that doesn't deliver, nothing more.
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Anonymous2006-02-20 0:45
I expected a goddamn interesting ending. The ending was "O RLY?" in terms of time travel nonsense.