IFC Films
Something most people can relate to is wondering about the past and their high school days and whether they had it better back then. For some, those whose high school experience was a nonstop orgy of popularity and parties with nothing but a boring life after, maybe it’s true. But for most people, high school wasn’t so much fun. Awkwardness and adolescence, confusion and worrying about everything. Some people might want to relive their glory days, and others might want to prove that their bad days are behind them.
It’s not usually so simple. I recall the dark comedy Young Adult with Charlize Theron playing a self-destructive person coming back to her hometown and doing everything wrong. Perhaps though it’s not fair to compare similar movie themes against each other.
The D Train is a dark comedy starring Jack Black as Dan Landsman, who lives with his wife Stacey (Kathryn Hahn) and teenage son Zach (Russell Posner). He works at a vaguely defined white collar company, concerned with accounts and the like, led by well meaning but mostly ineffectual boss Bill (Jeffrey Tambor). Where Dan is really working hard, in that Jack Black way, is for the high school reunion. He lives in his hometown and wants to prove that he’s not a loser anymore. To his wife and boss, he isn’t. But to everyone else, he remains awkward.
And the reunion seems like it won’t be well attended, as most people just don’t seem to care. A common thing for reunions. But then Dan sees a commercial on TV with a familiar face: Oliver Lawless (James Marsden), the most popular kid from their class. Dan now has a plan! If he can get Oliver to come, he’ll have proven his worth and made the reunion awesome. Of course, as it’s a dark comedy, it’s not that simple at all. Lies and trickery end up leading to a path of debauchery and confusion as Dan connects with Oliver in Los Angeles, but in doing so may be screwing up his own life back home.
The movie is filled with twists and turns, none of which I’m going to spoil for you. A few were troubling, being unclear if they were offensive, transgressive, or innovative. It’s hard to tell what the movie intended. But it’s an interesting story, if a bit odd. There’s a lot of “Wait, what?” moments, and plenty of times where I thought “Dan really can’t that stupid.” But it’s the bad decisions that create the drama here, with those few comedic moments dotting the landscape of pain and tension.
It’s nice to see Jack Black doing complex work here, which he hasn’t done as much since Bernie. He’s pretty great, getting laughs and pathos with lines other people couldn’t possibly pull off. James Marsden is also great, with a character of a complexity he almost never gets. But I found the movie kinda muddled, like it didn’t always know where it was going. The weird jealousy and bizarre lying sometimes cross the line from “Interesting for dramatic reasons” to “Oh, come on, now I can’t believe this.” However, the movie ended on a note of such mixed pleasantness and simultaneous derision, that it kind of ended up working for me. It may not as good as Young Adult, but it was a good watch nonetheless.
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