Review: The D Train
By Christine Petralia
Image courtesy of IFC Films
May 16, 2015
*Some spoilers*
Remember that guy or girl in your high school who wasn’t really part of a clique. They weren’t a jock or popular or a nerd or a thespian. They were just there, part of the background and you never really gave them any thought. That’s Jack Black’s character Dan Landsman. Except, now it’s his 20-year reunion and he’s that guy that wants to be popular. He wants people to notice him. Except that 20 years later, no one really cares anymore. And then things just get weird.
Head of the alumni reunion group, or rather so he thinks he is, Dan is determined to make the party epic with everyone from his graduating class attending. The one problem, he’s still a wallflower. Sure, he has a good job, despite his boss living in the stone age as far as technology. He has a hot wife (Kathryn Hahn) with two kids. But it’s not enough for him. He still wants to be part of the cool crowd. And every night after cold calls to get people to go to the reunion, he is still not invited out. One night, he sees the most popular kid in school, Oliver Lawless (James Marsden) in a Banana Boat commercial. After obsessing for a bit, he comes up with what he think is a brilliant idea: if he can get Oliver to come to the reunion, everyone else will come.
When he presents the idea to the group, they all make fun of him. So he starts to make up lies that he’s actually friends with Oliver and he will convince him to come. He lies to his boss about landing an important meeting with a client in Los Angeles in order to fly out there. One problem, his boss (Jeffrey Tambor) wants to come with him. So the lies keep on coming. While in Los Angeles, he manages to hold off his boss a bit on the fake meeting and manages to get Oliver to come out for drinks. They hang out, party it up, do drugs – the whole nine. At the end of the night, Oliver opens up and says he feels like he’s lying to everyone, including himself, about his life, which we all know isn’t that great. But Dan won’t have it and convinces him that he’s basically a god in his eyes, thus securing his appearance at the reunion. Oliver then helps Dan with his boss, except he makes a fake deal with him, making Dan panic.
And then it gets weird. The night after the fake deal, they take too many drugs and get too drunk and end up sleeping together, despite the fact that neither is gay. The next morning, Dan is that girl who doesn’t realize she’s a one-night stand. Back at home in Pennsylvania, Dan is suddenly cool in everyone’s eyes, but he has second thoughts about Oliver coming to his hometown. But, once people start reaching out to Oliver too, Dan won’t have it and lets Oliver stay with his family during the reunion weekend. Then Dan completely loses it, he gets jealous of Oliver and how cool he is. He wants all of Oliver’s attention, meanwhile Oliver is just being his care-free self, not realizing that Dan is, in a weird way, infatuated with him. Dan’s home and work life suffer as a result of his obsession. It all comes to a head right before the reunion, he confesses to his boss, who is wising up about all of the lies and then heads to the party. At the school, Dan gets extremely drunk and high and confronts Oliver on the dance floor. Oliver reveals to everyone that they slept together and embarrasses Dan.
Oliver does apologize in the end, but the damage is done. Dan is left to pick up the pieces of his marriage and his career.
An independent film that gets weird. It’s essentially a typical romance, but with two guys, who aren’t gay. Black does a weirdly good job as the awkward loner Dan or rather D-Train, who just wants to be noticed and fit in. Marsden plays Oliver to a T, the cool guy who is put on a pedestal, but in reality doesn’t live the life everyone thinks he is living. The pair plays well off each other. Hahn does a good job as Dan’s loving wife. In fact, her character is pretty under-rated. I would have liked to see more conflict with her and Dan once it all hit the fan. And Tambor does a great job as Dan’s technology-impaired boss who wises up pretty quickly. Not a horrible movie, just not what I was expecting.
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