TRAINWRECK
DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow
CAST: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson
CLASSIFICATION: 16 DLS
RUNNING TIME: 125 minutes
RATING: ***
Stand-up comedian and Comedy Central phenom, Amy Schumer, proves her cinematic bona fides in Trainwreck, a strikingly assured feature film debut in which she proves herself as authentic an actress as she is deft as a writer.
A warm, anarchic rom-com about a promiscuous journalist adrift in modern New York, Trainwreck hews to the contours of raunchy, R-rated comedy: it trafficks in the frank dialogue, absurd sexual situations and mortifying visual stunts familiar to viewers who made Knocked Up, The Hangover and Bridesmaids huge hits. But Schumer – apple-cheeked and blue-eyed, with the mouth of a longshoreman and the countenance of a choir girl – infuses the genre with rare warmth and emotional honesty. Beneath the bravado and how-low-can-I-go posturing beats the heart of a flawed, funny contradictory woman.
Schumer plays a character named Amy, whom we meet as a 9-year-old in the opening scene of Trainwreck as her father (Colin Quinn) explains why he’s leaving her mother, comparing marriage to playing with the same boring old doll all your life. “Monogamy isn’t realistic,” he insists. Twenty-three years later, Amy has taken that lesson to heart. Her younger sister (played as an adult by Brie Larson) is married to a good if slightly nerdy guy (Mike Birbiglia), but Amy is creeped out by their domestic bliss. She prefers to drink, get high and cheat on her bodybuilder boyfriend (John Cena) with an ever-changing roster of anonymous one-night stands, whom she routinely dispatches before the sun rises.
Amy’s party-hearty lifestyle provides plenty of comic fodder in Trainwreck. She compares one date’s physical endowments to the “whole cast of Game of Thrones”, then, after attaining her own sexual satisfaction, promptly falls asleep. But it’s clear that Amy’s commitment phobia and compulsive self-medication are masking more primal wounds, which come to the surface when she meets a sweet sports doctor named Aaron (Bill Hader) and her troubled relationship with her father takes an unexpectedly sombre turn.
Schumer handles that emotional pivot with skill and honesty. What makes Trainwreck work is that she approaches every beat – funny, serious and in-between – in an open state. And she’s blessed with the perfect opposite number in Hader, who delivers another heartfelt, appealing performance as a decent, if slightly out-of-his-depth, Everyman. His scenes with LeBron James – who, playing himself, delivers lines about topics including Downton Abbey and splitting a lunch cheque with expert, deadpan timing – lope along with companionable, low-key ease.
Trainwreck is directed by Judd Apatow, whose films have a tendency to sag, bag and bulge at the edges. This film has the same overlong, digressive streak, but it’s in the service of Schumer, whom Apatow naturally follows wherever she goes, even when she winds up in one or two cul-de-sacs. Tilda Swinton is funny as Amy’s brittle British editor, but her scenes have a perfunctory unfinished rhythm. A recurring movie-within-the-movie, starring two recognisable actors, feels like a juicy opportunity missed, and jokes about the racist assumptions Amy has inherited from her father fall thuddingly flat.
Schumer’s Amy has been compared to Apatow’s similarly directionless, infantile male protagonists, but in many ways she resembles his finest artistic creation: the complex, conflicted Lindsay Weir of his TV series Freaks and Geeks. Amy exudes more sexual confidence but possesses similar self-doubt and what just might be a tentative sense of worth.
Trainwreck ends on a triumphant but ambivalent note, with a gloriously goofy set piece that’s adorable, physically brave and completely disarming. But it also feels like a wholesale capitulation. There’s no doubt that Amy’s happy ending is earned, but viewers are left hoping that contentment won’t make her any less amazing.
– The Washington Post
If you liked Inside Amy Schumer and Hot Pursuit, you will like this.