Christina Reviews *Donnie Darko* starring Jake Gyllenhaal

          “Sometimes I question your commitment to Sparkle Motion.”

Donnie Darko is a deeply disturbed 15 year old.  So when he first meets a man-sized rabbit named Frank, you can’t help but wonder if this is all some crazy hallucination.

Frank is able to see the future, and he predicts exactly when the end of the world is going to occur.  The movie is about time travel.  It’s about esoteric stuff.  It's about how Donnie's older sister has a mysterious boyfriend who eats up all of her time and how his younger sister Samantha is in a dance group called Sparkle Motion that takes itself way too seriously.  It's about an Asian girl named Cherita who gets picked on by all the boys at school.  It's about how Donnie's girlfriend's family is messed up.  It's about how Drew Barrymore is in this movie.   I don’t really know what the movie is about, to be honest.  But what I liked about it is as follows:

1. Jake Gyllenhaal
2. The clever asides that don’t really seem to have much to do with anything but are funny regardless.
3. Jake Gyllenhaal burning down a "kiddie porn dungeon."
4.  Frank the Rabbit
5.  Maggie Gyllenhaal
6. Jake Gyllenhaal calling Patrick Swayze the anti-Christ.
7.  The fact that the director was not able to get the rights to “West End Girls” by Pet Shop Boys, so he had Sparkle Motion dance to “Notorious” by Duran Duran instead. 
8. Jake Gyllenhaal pondering the Smurf way of life and how it differs from his own.
9. Noah Wylie
10.  Oh, yeah.  And Jake Gyllenhaal telling some teacher to stick a book up her backside.  This last one is not actually shown.  It is implied.  And I appreciated the subtlety of that.

So those are ten reasons to watch Donnie Darko, half of which have to do with Jake Gyllenhaal doing something.  In case you didn't know, he does a lot of things in this movie.