Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Movie Music

When I worked at the box loading job, they gave me a gift certificate to Best Buy. So I did what any normal person would do and used it to buy a 3-pack of horror movies. One of the movies was "Donnie Darko."

I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching the movie, it's okay. Let me know if you want to borrow it. The movie is funny here and there but I liked one scene, in particular. The scene should have been the entire movie; everything else could be cut.

It's the scene where they play the "Tears for Fears" song, "Something happens and I'm head over heels..."

It starts with the kids jumping off the school bus in their uniforms and follows Donnie into the school. Then you see a bully walk past and sneer at Donnie and then the camera follows the bully. He sneers at an uppity teacher holding a book entitled "Attitudinal Beliefs," she sees him and walks off in a huff. The camera shows Donnie's love interest staring at herself in a mirror in her locker then back to the bully as he snorts something up his nose. A teacher walks by and watches the bully as if the bully is tying his shoe. Then you follow the teacher outside where an overweight girl who is picked on throughout the film is sitting at the base of a statue: the schools mascot, a muscle man with a bulldog head. Then you see the uppity teacher introducing Patrick Swayze (the author of "Attitudinal Beliefs") to Drew Berrymore (the English teacher; a cute head between two giant shoulderpads).

Then you follow Drew Berrymore past a group of little girls practicing their block-and-dodge-boxing dance routine for their performance group, "Sparkle Motion," and into English class where the song ends, "Funny how time flies."

If the one scene was the whole movie then the movie would be interesting. The movie has a lot of weird stuff in it, like it's all leading up to something deep and life-changing, but it never arrives anywhere. The overall point of the movie seems to be: Maybe people would be better off if you were dead.

It was made by the same people that make those "Final Destination" movies. Go figure. But I really think filmmakers should incorporate good music into more movies. If Spongebob can do it, the rest of Hollywood should be able to as well. Funny how movies like Shrek and Ice Age (that Rusted Root song is cool) can do it so well while movies for adults usually fail in the worst way.

1 comment:

Native Minnow said...

I liked Donnie Darko