Donnie Darko follows Donnie, a troubled teenager, who might be schizophrenic, who doesn't get along with just about anybody. He befriends a man dressed in a bunny costume, who may or not be real. He's involved with some type of mischief after narrowly escaping death. It's also about time travel, coincidences, and probably the meaning of life.
Story writing: Donnie Darko gets awakened by Frank the Bunny who allows him to escape what would be his certain death. After following Frank, he has conversations with Frank who makes him do a series of mischeivous actions. Donnie tries to figure what the meaning of all this is before Frank's apocalyptic message comes true. Or you know, none of that happened. Score: 9.5/10.
Dialogue writing: Beyond the awesome phrases of "fuck ass" and "suck a fuck", there were some periods of dead dialogue or at least dialogue that was supposed to be deep but ultimately failed. Well, there was the very thorough Smurfs discussion that some of my friends have labeled as Tarantinoesque. Some of the examples of dead or forced dialogue, could be found mainly in Drew Barrymore's scene where she forces Gretchen to choose what boy she thinks is the cutest will be the one she sits by. Score: 8.5/10
Characters: Donnie was a certainly well-developed character, there was some mystery surrounding Donne but it contributed heavily to the movie. Drew Barrymore's character, while a minor character, wasn't very good. The minor characters were for the most pretty interesting, including the pedophilic Jim Cunningham but could have been described better or at least better acted for more development. Score: 7.5/10
Directing: The movie really portrayed Donnie's sickness and allowed us to get inside Donnie's sick mind. It also allowed us to have questions at the end of the movie. While we've been taught that movies are supposed to wrap up nicely at the end of them, it's somewhat more satisfying to figure out what really happened after the movie was over and overanalyze it.
Score: 10/10.
Suspension of disbelief: It kind of depends what you think happened in the film. If you believe that Donnie was shizophrenic and that the majority of the movie is him coping with his impending death, you are able to believe a lot of the movie could actually happen. If you believe that the movie is literal and that he is explaining how to travel through time, that requires for a lot of suspension of disbelief
Score: 9/10.
Timing: I never felt like the movie was dragging and for the most part almost every scene contributed in some way to the film. This applies even moreso if the movie is a set of coincidences all needing to happen in this particular order. Score: 10/10.
Genre specific: I'm not sure where to classify this movie in a specific drama. I guess that that the genre would be a dramatic sci-fi, since I can't list many movies in the genre, it's a high score. Score: 10/10.
Theme/Pseudo-philosophical questions: Of course this is going to be a high score. Ask any 20 something year old stone and they'll tell you of the relative importance of this movie. Score: 10/10.
Acting: Like I said before, some of the characters could have benefitted from better acting. This applies mainly to Drew Barrymore. I didn't really buy her acting in this movie. It seemed like she was intentionally acting like she had never acted before. I didn't think that the mother or father were particularly well acted. Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, I thought did, fantastic. Especially Maggie. (Weird crush alert). Score: 10/10.
Re-watchability: This movie actually gets better the more times you watch it. You start to notice the little details that you missed the last time. Score: 10/10
Total Score: 91/100.
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