High class
Great film, shame about the re-title…
BAD BROMANCE 15
OUT now Out now DVD , Digita l HD
What are your options if your cracking comedy-drama nosedives at the box office? Well, changing the title from the action-y-sounding The D Train might not be a bad idea, though you’d have hoped they could have come up with something a little less offensive than Bad Bromance (to say more would be to deprive those yet to see it – which, judging from that woeful box office, is just about everybody).
Excelling as Dan Landsman, the self-appointed head of his high school reunion committee, Jack Black brings unexpected pathos to what might have been an insufferable sad sack. But it’s James Marsden’s preening Oliver Lawless who steals the show. Spotted by Dan in a suntan lotion commercial, Lawless, who was always the cool kid at school, has now made it in LA. Thus Dan heads out there in an effort to secure Oliver’s attendance (and the kudos that will come with it)…
What follows is amusing, affecting and really rather daring, as debut writer/ directors Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogul subvert genre conventions and go to places other bromances don’t dare countenance. Marsden, like Black, turns his archetype inside out, and there’s fine support from the ever-excellent Kathryn Hahn and
Transparent’s Jeffrey Tambor as, respectively, Dan’s wife and boss. Let’s just hope that this sharp-edged gem can survive its second terrible title to garner attention on DVD – along with Magic Mike XXL, released two months prior, it represents a forward stride in US cinema’s attitudes to sexuality.
Extras › Gag reel