Gyllenhaal's long, open face seems like a wound here; his every state of mind bleeds onto the screen. He has to carry a heavy load of exposition and tone. As with Hughes's protagonists, Donnie's suffering is a way to make him more sensitive -- not of this world -- than the others around him. He is often accompanied by the rabbit, but this one, with its bared-fangs grimace, isn't the imaginary pal that inhabited James Stewart's misshapen psyche in Harvey. Of course, you can't help noticing the dark-side reference to one of Stewart's best-known roles, but in Donnie Darko the cotton candy airiness of the Stewart fantasy has been converted into a spider's web of unhappiness.
Donnie is a martyred teenager, a sacrificial victim of his own empathy with other people; that concept makes Donnie Darko insufferable. (It didn't do Natalie Wood much good in Splendor in the Grass, either.) Kelly tangos with attempted shifts in the narrative, trying to blend comedy and tragedy, but the movie is often lumpy and dolorous.
There are many attempts at a lightness of touch. At one point, Donnie and his pals get into an argument over the sex lives of the Smurfs. And part of the climax calls for his mother to chaperone a group of kids, including Donnie's little sister, on a trip to Los Angeles to compete on Star Search. The girls win by thrusting their tiny hips in a hoochie-mama tribute to the Laker Girls, danced to the tune of Duran Duran's Notorious.
Kelly is unable to give the movie the kind of pacing that would make us laugh and shock us simultaneously, because he's too infatuated with an aura of hand-me-down gloom. Figuratively, Donnie Darko takes place under a blood-red sky, to use a 1980's reference (from U2's War) that wouldn't be out of place here. He has assembled a fine cast and shows some sensitivity of his own in the way he handles it. Gyllenhaal's commitment is particularly spooky; he is probably a couple of great roles away from being a star. The actors' loyalty to the director's vision is evident; the director just hasn't figured out what that vision is.
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