The second I told my mother I really hadn't cared for it she immediately went "let me guess, bad science." But it's not even bad science, I can enjoy movies with bad science. I just felt that Donnie Darko wasn't really consistent with its own established premise and kind-of took itself too seriously.
For example, the pages of the book that Roberta Sparrow wrote never really tie into the story. I mean you can sort-of say the whole "manipulated dead" applies to Frank but who was manipulating him? What was the purpose of manipulating him? So Donnie could go back in time and kill himself? Couldn't that just be avoided by not interacting with Frank in the first place? Why did he even need to die? If he had the power to "build a time machine" (which is never expanded upon in any form) then why couldn't he just go back and warn himself? Because the "tangent universe" had to go away as well?
I don't know, I felt like a lot of the time the movie was just trying to be way too complicated when it didn't really have the material. I can appreciate complex time travel storylines and really thrive on them, even if there's bad science involved. Donnie Darko just felt like it was way in-your-face all the time with flashy screens and giant close-ups of eyeballs and all this computer code scrolling past when all of it meant absolutely nothing to the actual story.
Don't get me wrong, there were some legitimately great parts. A lot of the stuff with his family was great, the dialogue was funny and sometimes meaningful. Oh, and I really liked how he called out that phony motivational speaker on his **** (even before he turned out to be a pedophile). Drew Barrymore's character I thought was really cool as well. But when it started trying to get into the deep sci-fi stuff it started tripping over its own feet (although I must admit the ending with Mad World was sad and creepy and everything they were probably going for; that is to say, effective).
Oh and holy **** Jake Gyllenhaal but that goes without saying.
