The D Train
The D Train is a very dark comedy that stars Jack Black as a downtrodden “woe is me” alumni director of his high school responsible for organizing a big reunion. Since basically not many folks are interested in attending, Dan concocts a crazy plan to go find and coerce the only quasi-celebrity (James Marsden) into coming to the reunion. Even though Marsden’s character Oliver Lawless has only been seen on sunscreen commercials, Dan is almost brought to ultimate fanboy status at the mere fact of knowing someone famous.
Dan makes up a story to tell his wife and boss that he needs to go to California on a business trip and that is pretty much where things fall apart for him. Without ruining the plot for you, I can safely say that a lot of unexpected and even very shocking things happen during his trip that causes pretty much everything in his life to spiral downward. The film gets pretty repetitive in that Dan makes mistake after mistake after mistake trying to gain “buddy” status with Oliver.
It was great to see the acting range of Jack Black on something a bit more relevant than Nacho Libre, etc…, but the script and awkward storyline distracts an otherwise nice job by him. In fact, by the end, I was pretty much tired of hearing his character speak. I think the premise of the story was there, but the execution seemed flimsy and contrived. It’s as if at times the film did not know whether to be or comedy or a drama and instead ended up as truly neither.
Kathryn Hahn did and admirable job playing Dan’s wife and Marsden pretty much plays the same role of hunky, pretty guy like in most of his films. This film is also a tad slow and the plot twists are definitely not for everyone.
We give it a 5 out of 10.
