The Girl on the Train

Hollywood has become so predictable in these past few years that it’s actually kind of sad, and when I say sad, I mean like crying Michael Jordan face meme sad. It’s turned into the little brother who copies everything his older sibling does, or if you are lucky enough to live in the Austin area, like the East side hipster who borrows everything he does from poor black guys in the early 60’s. I guess since Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl did so well in the theater and was so universally liked by critics and the Academy alike, studios everywhere went out running to try and the find the next story that involved rich affluent white women doing sinister things in the suburbs.

Now I personally love rich and sinister white women only because I am an over privileged scrub who lives in downtown Austin but everyone else who actually has common sense knows to avoid these ruthless predators. So they’re definitely not going to pay any money to see them in a movie! But no not me; there I was on opening night with a giant tub of popcorn and a half chub just waiting for Emily Blunt to come on screen. Now I should’ve known something was wrong when the trailer for Even Darker Shades of Grey (not even sure that’s its real name and I don’t really care) came on right before the film started. I should’ve heeded the warnings and ran for the hills right then and there but I instead stayed and suffered through this lame tale of broken hearts and sloppy adultery. Kind of makes it sound like a Death Cab for Cutie song, doesn’t it? Yet another reason to run for the hills!

Anyway, the film finally started and we were treated, and I use that term loosely, to 30 minutes or so of Blunt’s best impression of a drunken Dan Akroyd in his Santa suit from Trading Places. The entire first act of the film is simply her getting boozed up on her daily commute from the suburbs into New York City where she presumably goes in to work and does some sort of job that requires her to draw. The film doesn’t go into too much detail about her work however you do know that she is a creative type who lets her mind wander about the lives of the upper echelon as she constantly daydreams about this one particular house she sees every day from the windows of her train.

She imagines that the couple who lives in this house has the perfect marriage and that they’re madly in love with one another. And to make matters worse, when you finally see the couple she envies for the first time, they actually do look the part. The problem however lies with the home that’s next door to theirs. She hates herself because she can’t help but spy (albeit from the train) on the family that’s living there. She sees it as the life that got away from her. Why, you ask? Well it’s because that house belongs to her ex-husband and his current wife who used to be his mistress. They have a newborn baby together and that is what has caused Blunt to turn into a fall down drunk.

The fact that she and her ex (Justin Theroux) couldn’t have children tore their marriage apart and eventually led to their split but clearly Blunt can’t let it go as she constantly calls, texts, and stalks them on Facebook. She however has a problem remembering any of this as she is always black out drunk and is constantly eating salmon out of her dirty beard. Ok, so maybe I made that last part up. Well this only really becomes a serious issue for her after she one day sees the woman who she once thought to be perfect engaging in an extra-marital affair. She immediately decides to confront her about it but then blacks out before you can see their interaction; and the next thing you know, the beautiful woman ends up missing. Is she dead? Did Blunt kill her? Or was she simply a figment of her imagination?

Now I give the studio props for coming up with a trailer that made this film look like the next Silence of the Lambs (it rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again) but in reality all this trash ended up being was another lame Lifetime movie with A-list actors. First of all, everyone in the film was beautiful, including the perfect woman’s psychiatrist. Excuse me but the last time I checked, all psych majors were overweight, had graying beards by the time they were 20, and wore coke bottle eyeglasses that were the size of circus billboards! Trust me I know this because I was one. Second, for a film that promoted a ton of steamy sex scenes, all you ended up getting was the occasional moan with a hazy shot of dry humping from a distance. Please, if I wanted to watch terrible soft core porn, I’d go to my balcony and spy on my ugly neighbors. Again, my eye sight is so poor that I couldn’t actually see any penetration if I wanted to.

Oh and once you final figure out the whodunit, it feels like you just finished reading one of those cheesy paperback books that has a half dressed woman in white on the cover. The fact that this movie had Blunt in it was the only thing that kept me from walking out of the theater in the third act. I wouldn’t wish this film experience on my ex-girlfriend and she sucked! I give Girl on Train a rating of really WEAK!