I saw Donnie Darko on Saturday; it’s a teen/SF/thriller/dark comedy movie, and not necessarily in that order. I thought it was very entertaining – there were some great lines in the school scenes, the music and direction was well done and overall the acting was good.
It’s interesting how Donnie Darko turned out. Usually there’s a fairly good delination between films that make sense, and films that don’t make sense. I have no problem with films that don’t make sense, as long as they at least implicitly admit it (e.g. XXX); and of course I can’t complain about films that do make sense, even if you have to think about them for a while (e.g. Memento).
Donnie Darko falls in the middle; it doesn’t have any huge, gaping plot holes which leave you cursing the writers, but it has more than its fair share of ambiguities and problems which defy giving the film’s plot any less than (say) two or three rock solid interpretations. As it turns out, the creators of Donnie Darko didn’t have a single interpretation of the plot either, which they admitted, so that isn’t so bad.
But anyway – it’s definitely worth seeing. It’s just been released in the UK, mostly to arts cinemas, and you can get it on the DVD in the US.
mssv 
Yes, I agree that there are some ambiguities that should have been cleared up. For instance was it possible to tell that Frank was Donnie’s sister’s boyfriend? From the DVD added scenes, yes, but from the theatrical release, I don’t think so.
I certainly didn’t realise that Frank was his sister’s boyfriend the first time around, although when I thought about it I wasn’t so sure. The second time around, I actively looked for clues towards this and the theatrical release does give you enough information to work it out, but I agree that it’s not exactly presented clearly.
I totally didn’t get that frank was the sister’s boyfriend. And I have seen in twice now (just as good, if as confusing!). One of my mates has the DVD so I’ll have to borrow it and view the deleted scenes.