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Going to a high school reunion can be a daunting task. You’re stuck in a room with a bunch of people you haven’t seen in many years and almost instantly you remember why it has been so many years since you’ve seen them. You are wasting a fleeting weekend in the middle of your life with people who have becomes strangers, and they have become strangers for a good reason. For some, it is the biggest waste of time and it makes one realize that you can’t go home again. It is this backdrop that produces the (and I’m using this word very loosely) comedy THE D TRAIN.
Jack Black plays Dan, the self-appointed head of the 20th year reunion committee in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. We get the idea that Dan is a bit of a control freak, down to the point that he won’t let the other members have the Facebook password. He and the others are having little luck getting everyone on board to attend. One night while watching TV, he notices a commercial and the high school stud Oliver Lawless is the star. Dan has always been envious of Oliver and becomes determined to get him to attend their reunion.
Dan lies to his boss that there is a big client in LA and that he’s about to bag him. This is the first lie that blows-up in his face because the boss then wants to make the deal himself. The fleet-footed Dan dances around his superior while trying to contact Oliver. He finally does and meets the man for a drink. This starts the plunge down the dark hole for the milquetoast Dan in the fast-moving world of Los Angeles.
Oliver takes Dan to different bars, of the regular and strip variety, where they consume massive amounts of booze and lines of cocaine. All this leads to a big twist that had some patrons leave the theater. It is meant to be shocking and provocative. It delivers on both points. The next morning Dan wakes up and begins to question everything that happened that night. Oliver just shrugs it off, but it really bothers Dan who soon finds himself back in Pittsburgh. But his boss believes that there is a major deal on the table and expects him to deliver. The reunion committee gets wind that Oliver is going to return and expects Dan to deliver. Dan’s wife Stacy (Kathryn Hahn) knows that there is something wrong with her husband but can’t figure out what it is, she just knows he’s not the same man who went to L.A.
The film builds to the reunion weekend and Oliver and Dan re-meeting. It becomes the boiling point for Dan and he explodes in the third act. That is when everyone finds out what happened in Los Angeles. There is this side story of Dan’s 14-year-old son dating an older girl and her wanting to have a threesome. Again, this is another vile aspect of the film that is done for comedic aspect and a failing aspect at that. The ending of the film is the only truly honest and sobering moment, and it takes away 90 minutes of your life to get there, which is still quicker than most reunions last.
This film is just painfully bad, one of the worst of the year. To begin with, the aesthetic just looks ugly. Both L.A. and Pittsburgh are different and interesting cities, full of vibrant settings and colors. Under this production, both are flat and lifeless. There is no feeling of wonder in the production, and the world of this story is an ugly one. Speaking of ugly, the characters of are all just that, both on the inside and the outside. Both James Marsden and Jack Black are sad and pathetic people here, different sides of the same coin. While one may be the class stud and the other the class loser, they are both equally wretched. There should be a degree of sympathy for both men, but in the end there is none. The only person who rises above the muck is Kathryn Hahn as Dan’s wife. That said, a single breath of sunshine can not pierce through the dreck that is THE D TRAIN.
All the music in the film is from the 1980s, while the film is about the reunion for the class of 1994. Weren’t they all like kindergarteners when that music was popular? Written and directed by Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul, these guys seem lost in the production. The story does not work in almost every aspect, not as a black comedy or a regular comedy. Time and time again, jokes fall off the screen before they can make it to the first row of the theater. One has to wonder if they had ever seen a movie before making this one. Everyone should definitely not take this train over the weekend, and THE D TRAIN is a perfect name for the film. D is definitely the grade this exercise deserves!
