A troubled teenage boy with existential angst (parents, existence, Whatever), a girlfriend with 'issues' (life, boyfriends, duh), and an ASBO-magnet hoodie - yes, it's Donnie Dar... oh wait, it's The United States Of Leland.
When the eponymous Donnie-a-like Leland P Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) is sent to a juvenile detention centre for killing a boy, his only explanation is "the sadness". The rest of this pretentious photocopy film sees the teacher in his centre (Don(nie) Cheadle) trying to discover just what this means and what the boy's girlfriend (Donnie's Jena Malone) and distant author father (Kevin Spacey) contributed to his plight.
With a voiceover that plays teen-angst drivel as profound insight, it's as if Dawson's bloody Creek was still flowing as writer/ director Matthew Ryan Hoge hobbles towards a perfect representation of life's pointlessness: the (extras-free) film itself.
