S. Darko

As huge fan of the first Donnie Darko I was very excited to see this. It was such a shame that the original director didn't make this film. The film is trashy and brings nothing new to the table. It take a handful of special effects and concepts from the first one and turns it into a crappy teen flick. The main characters made me cringe and after the first half an hour I thought this is a disgrace to the original film.

This film is not worth wasting your time on. The sad thing is that some people will see this film without seeing the original Donnie Darko. This film should never have been made.

Before anyone gets on their high horse saying I am one of those Donnie Darko fans not giving this new movie a chance, I gave this film a chance and spent the five bucks to rent it straight away after learning it existed.

The only good thing about this film is that it ended. OK, that may be harsh, the film's colour and surrounding landscape it unfolds in is pretty cool but that is it. The only other interesting elements, whether technical in filming style or plot-wise of this film, were ripped straight from the first film. What was cool in Donnie Darko is merely imitation here.

The plot is weak and has logic holes which fail the Donnie Darko/tangent universe test from the first film. As fans of the original we cannot help but compare the two films because s.Darko centres on characters and memories from the first one and rotates on the principles that drove the original as well. How can you not compare the two? What almost borders on insulting in this film are the straight repetitions of acts, scenes and quirky characters from the first one replicated in this one. I don't want to spoil the film if you are drawn to sit and endure it but you'll see what I mean, you cannot miss the weak, formulaic repetition, especially if you are a fan of the original.

Basically, s.Darko is the same model car like Donnie Darko but has different paint colour and chokes along on a four-cylinder engine whereas the first one rumbled along on six.

I was honestly shocked that this film was actually worse than I was expecting it to be. It really seems like the writer and director got hired for the job, watched about half of the first film before they got bored, and then set off to make something roughly similar. Awful dialogue, careless (and painfully obvious) anachronisms, and some jaw-droppingly bad CG effects. I'd be willing to bet they had more money to make this than Richard Kelly had to work with on the original, and none of it's up on the screen. Maybe it cost them a lot of money to license "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe" by Whale.

*cough* Anyway, as far as cash-grab sequels go this has to be one of the all-time worst. A suggestion: tape an episode of "One Tree Hill" or "Gossip Girl," then put on some red-and-blue 3D glasses, and pretend one of the cast members is saying stuff like "Remember the future" and "My farts taste like cherries." Then watch the show on rewind for about twenty minutes and do it all over again. Repeat for 102 minutes total, and you've had roughly the same experience. Utterly shameful.

As soon as I had heard about this hybrid sequel (and it is a sequel), I immediately thought that they had gone and done it again, I thought they just couldn't help themselves, I thought that it was just another money spinner and it was produced to simply draw in the gradual pulse of Donnie Darko fans.

After watching it though, it really didn't disappoint, my initial gut instinct was right. This film follows in the footsteps of other previous solo films that they just couldn't leave alone.

This film has so many Donnie Darko cliché's, it's unbelievable, the visual effects (which I could have done myself), the stylised music of the time, the time lapse scenes (which are OVERUSED), the times caped school scene (with Tears for Fears)... Everything... Everything that made Donnie Darko the artistic and visually spectacular film it was, has been transposed to this and it has been transposed, woefully.

They have even cast a couple of Jake Gyllenhaal lookalikes for some of the parts, and there is NO way this is an accident, because they act so badly, they must have been cast on their uncannily resemblance to J.G.

It's a bit like when Dennis Leary, Ripped off Bill Hicks, it's rather sad seeing someone else trying to imitate someone else's joke, you still laugh at it for a minute, but afterwards, you just want your money back.

This film is a bit poo, I can't even comment on its "plot", because, you can see "the plot", has been moulded around the model of Donnie Darko, you can see that the plot was the last thing they thought about, which funnily enough, in a Donnie Darko fashion, was probably the first thing though about in Donnie Darko.

I don't know though, for some strange reason, this feels more like a bad re-make, than a sequel, and people probably will say something like "You have watch this movie, independently, don't think that it's a sequel to Donnie Darko, try to see it for what it is.", okay, that would be a fair thing to say. But as soon as you release a movie, with one of the same actors from the original, with the same title as the original (nearly), with the same freaking emblem as the original, pfft... well... You can't cook a cookie from a recipe and say it's your own.

Now, let's get to the acting. The acting is awful, there really doesn't seem to be any interACTION, between the actors, it just feels as though they are saying the lines to each other, it really does, there doesn't feel like there is any co-character development, there doesn't seem to be any rapport at all, and more importantly, there doesn't seem to a distinguishable emotion, throughout the movie, honestly, watch it... The best actor throughout, is one of the actors who hardly has a scene John Hawkes, from, From Dusk Till Dawn and Identity.

There are also 2 shady looking characters in the film, who don Men in Black attire. They look like two bloody elephants in a fridge, they really do, they look SO out of place and so uneasy on the camera, that they were probably just picked from the town that they filmed in, either that or they are two tecchies from the production team.

As I've said before, the production looks shoddy, it really does, the effects from Donnie Darko, looked much better and that was.. what? 8 years ago? And 8 years, is a long time in technological terms. Even in one scene (this is supposed to be set in 1995), you can see post 95 produced Cars in the background, and an up to date Budweiser sign.

(I wish I could do the time travel thing and go back in time and NOT watch this film.)

All-in-All, this film is bad, I suppose my advice could be to watch it with an open mind, but I would be misadvising you, this film is obviously aimed at making a few quid from Donnie Darko fans and with that in mind, I just can't get past the audacity of the reason for this film. It is a much asked question of films, especially sequels, but I am going to ask it anyway.

Why?

I have given this film a 4/10, and that is primarily because I think that the lead is hot, she walks around a hot state, with practically nothing on most of the time and the fact that she looks like Jessica Biel, that is how skin deep I feel, after watching this film, which is no doubt, how the producers thought throughout the process of making this film.

If you are thinking of buying this on DVD for a present for someone you know who is a Donnie Darko fan, then don't, A. It will disappoint them and B. It will only spur on, more crap like this.

And as for one KILLER line in the movie...

"Like... Drugs and Anus Sex!" Best line in the whole movie.

well where do i begin. i never expected much from this film but i hoped for so much more than i got. the plot is randomly all over the place with hints of donnie darko crow bared in to make it relevant to the original(and probably the idea was to interest fans of the original). the acting is very wooden, the story is totally rambling and the end is stupid in so many ways. it seems very much like the makers have gone way out of the way to appeal to fans of the original, well i am very much one of those fans and i hated it with more than a passion, i only found out about this movie about an hour before i sat down to watch it, i wish i never found out about it.its obvious why it went straight to DVD. so if you are a fan of the original stay away from this one and just keep on loving donnie darko.