The D Train

The D Train (15)

USA 2015 101 mins Dir: Jarrad Paul, Andrew Mogel  Starring: Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor, Mike White

The dismal likes of Gulliver’s Travels and Year One make it easy to forget that, when he dials down the mugging, Jack Black is perfectly capable of giving a powerful, nuanced performance. Unfortunately, when he does so, as in the excellent, genuinely creepy Bernie, audiences stay at home. The D Train seems likely to suffer the same fate as punishment for its subversive pushing of the boundaries of bromantic comedy beyond the safe limits established by the likes of I Love You, Man. In an age when trailers routinely give away most of the plot, Sony’s coy approach suggests that they have absolutely no idea how to promote it and would really rather Yes Man writers Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul’s directorial debut just went away.

In a role that initially seems no great stretch, Black plays portly, socially maladroit loser Dan Landsman, who never got over being the uncoolest kid in school. Now he’s the unloved, controlling, self-appointed chairman of the reunion committee, which is struggling to persuade anyone to sign up for its 20th anniversary Class of ’94 bash. Then he spots former schoolmate Oliver Lawless (Marsden) in a Banana Boat commercial and has a brainwave. He figures that if he can lure this charismatic star back to Pittsburgh, attendance will rocket and he’ll be the hero of the committee, basking in Lawless’s reflected glory. Conning his technophobic boss (Tambor) into believing he’s won their firm a big contract in LA, starstruck Dan arrives in the city of angels on a rendezvous with the stubbly, tanned, shades-wearing, leather-jacketed bad boy Hollywood stud. A bonding evening twist ensues that you can probably guess but wouldn’t anticipate from a mainstream Hollywood comedy, suffice it to say that this pitches things into the indie territory of Chuck and Buck (whose writer and star Mike White has a small role here).

Having gone there, Paul and Mogel’s script digresses into familiar 15-rated raunchy funny business, notably when Lawless instructs Dan’s wide-eyed 14-year-old son in how to accomplish the mechanics of a threesome. (“You just stack ’em like lawn chairs, one of top of the other. Then you hose ’em down.”) But the genie is out of the bottle, and to the film’s credit it never tries to stuff it back in – delivering a slightly flabby second act that nonetheless brings a genuine sense of refreshing, taboo-busting danger to the cringe-comedy genre. Of course, they can’t sustain this and it’s easy to see how the contrived, unsatisfactory cop-out ending might have gone in a more transgressive direction that would have had Middle America really choking on its popcorn. But the performances are terrific, establishing a brittle dynamic between Black’s sad, confused, out-of-his-depth, emotionally needy Dan; Kathryn Hahn’s supportive, long-suffering, easily charmed Mrs Dan; and James Marsden’s swaggering, hard-living pretty boy Lawless, who finally gives vent to his own fragility.