Amy Schumer is the new big thing in comedy these days, and it’s exciting to see her career explode so quickly. Her sketch comedy series Inside Amy Schumer recently completed its third season on Comedy Central and saw a number of breakthrough Emmy nominations. And this summer she is poised to reach the stratosphere as she makes her movie-star debut in Trainwreck, a big mainstream Hollywood romantic comedy directed and produced by Judd Apatow, for which she also wrote the screenplay.
Schumer stars as Amy Townsend, a journalist working for a sleazy men’s magazine, who has been raised by her rapscallion of a father (Colin Quinn) to believe that monogamy isn’t realistic. She lives her life moving from one fling or one-night-stand to the next, enjoying the sex but not wanting any emotional connection. Early in the film, Amy is stunned when her most prominent lover (played by pro-wrestler John Cena) is devastated to learn not only that she is she still seeing other men, but that she has no plans to stop. But love is just not something that Amy wants or believes in.
When Amy’s boss, Dianna (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton), assigns her a story on Dr. Aaron Conners, a physician who works with pro-athletes, Amy begins to question everything she thought she believed. Her initial interview with Aaron (Bill Hader) is awkward, since Amy hates sports and doesn’t know a thing about them (which is precisely why Dianna chose her to write the story). But soon enough, as the two discover that they enjoy each other’s company and start to spend more and more time together, Amy realizes she’s developed feelings for him and doesn’t quite know what to do about it. Can she learn how to love a man? Can she learn how to be monogamous? Can she be happy with only one person for the rest of her life?
Of course she can, and that’s the biggest problem I have with this film. For a film written by Schumer — a comic so enthusiastically vulgar and creative, with so much to say about how love and sex intersect in the 21st century — Trainwreck turns out to be nothing more than another formulaic, unsurprising fairy-tale rom-com. Everything happens exactly as it always does in this type of film: two vastly different people meet-cute, unexpectedly fall in love, encounter all manner of obstacles, but finally emerge triumphantly coupled by the end. I know a lot of people love this kind of movie, and Trainwreck does indeed do it well, but I can’t help but be disappointed by what I see as a missed opportunity for Schumer to do in cinema what she constantly does on television and subvert our expectations in a deep, insightful way about what a rom-com can do and be. The film she did write is ultimately just a funny, but ordinary, retelling of the same stale story.
Schumer, however, is so great in the film. She manages to take the typical Amy Schumer persona that she always plays — the sarcastic, hyper-sexual, heavy-drinking, ditzy party girl — and deepen her, evolving her into a real woman who feels emotions and has a thoughtful inner life and is, well, human. Schumer is a major star, and this film proves that. Here’s hoping it launches her into a huge big-screen career.
Swinton, meanwhile, is hilarious in little more than a glorified cameo. With a long wig, deep tan, and glamour makeup that totally camouflage her ethereal alien-queen beauty, Swinton is the perfect shallow, sassy big-city boss — and she makes wonderful and specific actorly choices that do more to bring this woman to life in a few short scenes than anything in the script ever does. Hader, meanwhile, is very real and sensitive, and it’s a delight to see him in a role like this; he’s always great, but I never would have expected to see him cast as a romantic lead in a Hollywood rom-com. He nails it. Current Saturday Night Live star Vanessa Bayer is also very funny as Amy’s colleague and best friend. Trainwreck actually offers a veritable smorgasbord of SNL stars past and present — in addition to the aforementioned Bayer, Hader, and Quinn, the film features cameos by Tim Meadows, Leslie Jones, and Pete Davidson.
Cena is unexpectedly fantastic, and laugh-out-loud funny, in his scenes early in the film. One sequence in particular, where he and Amy are at the movies and get into an argument with another couple, is especially great — no matter how many threats and taunts he yells at the man in question, he is unable not to sound like he’s coming on to him. I would love to see him do more comedies. LeBron James also appears in a supporting role, playing himself, as Aaron’s best friend. He, too, is natural and funny.
This being a Judd Apatow film, it’s also a good 20 to 30 minutes too long, clocking in at over two hours. And yet the film has three (THREE!) credited editors. Some of those middle stretches are such a drag, and I found myself losing interest for a bit. Several scenes in which Aaron and LeBron are just hanging out serve no narrative purpose; the same goes for a recurring gag where Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei are overacting like hell in a film that Amy keeps watching. These scenes are there because they’re funny, but they’re just examples of the film treading water — which brings any narrative momentum to a screeching halt.
In the end, though, Trainwreck is a funny and charming film that I’m happy to endorse, warts and all, as a diverting summer romp.
