Donnie Darko: Critic Reviews

Kelly is a supple and courageous storyteller, boldly free-associating as he mixes parody and satire with earnest psychodrama and coming up with plot points no one could anticipate.

Donnie Darko has plenty of problems. But most stem from a young filmmaker overswinging on his first time up to the plate and hitting a deep fly out rather than a home run.

A decidedly weird time-travel drama that puzzled viewers so much that many went back to see it again and again... Unfortunately, Kelly's extended version diminishes the film's impact.

Maybe Richard Kelly's fate is to be the cult-film circuit's Michael Cimino. He has yet to match the mood or magnitude of his debut - a collision of time-travel sci-fi, commentary on '80s malaise and teen angst that's simultaneously witty and poignant.

A brilliant and truly incredible piece of art that deserves to be watched...

The film...asks the question: what if the universe as we live it, not just as we theorize it, really isn't as we imagine it? In making the mundane as bottomless as the cosmic, Donnie Darko has the guts to remain a riddle itself.

The drowsy surrealism and elaborate inconclusiveness of Donnie Darko will simultaneously guarantee it a rabid cult and put it way off limits to the don't-get-its.

The directors cut of Donnie Darko by Richard Kelly was screened at the Venice Film Festivals a couple of years ago, a film I missed for sure when it was released in 2001 and one of those pearls like Blade Runner that just is haunting screening after scree

Kelly captures, better than any film in recent memory other than Election, what it feels like to be in high school.

In its metaphysical concerns and challenging notions about personal and social responsibility, the film aims much higher than most American youth pictures.

Donnie Darko's flaws, though, are those of a young, talented filmmaker reaching beyond his current grasp. That's a more forgivable sin than soulless excess or hubris-fueled incompetence.

You either love it or hate it. For those who loved it, I have only one word: overrated.c

A faithfully rendered head trip.

One of the most remarkable films of 2001, and it deserves a much larger audience than it has so far gained.

Donnie Darko ranks among Gattaca, Pi and Dark City for pure imagination -- and surpasses them for astonishing execution.

The big screen, in any shape or form, is the ideal way to experience Donnie Darko, and so a re-release like this is a rare and welcome gift.

The original was a movie for all those castaways who believe in unexplained phenomenon; the new version reads like a handbook on how to pick up women.

Donnie Darko swings for the fences, and it goes yard.

If the sum total of Donnie Darko is hard to figure, there's no questioning that its separate scenes add up to breathtaking filmmaking.

Though the film at times blurs the line between reality and fantasy to the point where it occasionally becomes difficult to read, it's definitely worth experiencing.

The [film's] pointedly bipolar tone might have been modeled on the wild mood swings of the Cure's adolescent-apocalypse epic Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me from the white-hot summer of '87.

If you believe Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anya, there's something very malevolent about bunnies.

Em seu longa-metragem de estreia, Richard Kelly prova ser nao apenas um roteirista repleto de imaginacao, mas tambem um diretor inteligente e talentoso - e Jake Gyllenhaal e um ator fascinante.

A mini-masterpiece that marks the arrival of brave new talents in Gyllenhaal and Kelly. Cult glory beckons.

An unnerving, electrifying debut film from 26-year-old writer/director Kelly, one that elucidates the universal traumas of growing up, but does so with a startling uncommonness.