Like some sort of science experiment to see if you can make a lackluster and lazy one-joke movie passably entertaining if the joke is good enough and Nic Cage is the star.

Rewatched tonight at the IFC Center, preceded by Chuck Jones’ “What’s Opera, Doc?” Both still masterpieces.

Sometimes it's been a long week, and you just need to watch Denzel Washington as an impossibly handsome and charismatic grizzled train engineer work with Chris Pine as an impossibly handsome and charismatic hotheaded train rookie and Rosario Dawson as an impossibly beautiful and charismatic train dispatcher to stop a runaway train full of hazardous chemicals while a bunch of doofus character actors do their best to throw obstacles in their way.

What if a kid basically had a pet Pinhead, but — unlike the old suburban fantasy films this movie quotes — the family that adopts the monster is deeply dysfunctional and amoral (in the most lovable way)?

My friend Stuart has a small part in this movie, and I take great comfort knowing that the universe somehow saw fit to let him to be in the most Stuart movie ever.