By Whether or not you’re a fan of her comedy, Amy Schumer is not going anywhere. Comedy’s current “It” girl, Schumer’s earned all of the accolades through her comedy specials and often hilarious television show, Inside Amy Schumer. When I first learned she was teaming up with Judd Apatow on a non-traditional romantic comedy, I was ecstatic. Schumer definitely doesn’t fit into the conventional romantic lead mold, and I couldn’t wait to see how her writing held together in long form work.
Trainwreck may not be total reinvention of the romantic comedy, but it’s the most entertaining one of some time. It’s as far from an actual train wreck as possible.
Trainwreck
Director: Judd Apatow
Rated: R
Release Date: July 17, 2015
In Trainwreck, Amy Townsend (Amy Schumer) is a woman who’s just enjoying her life. She’s got a good job writing for a magazine and doesn’t see the need to get into a monogamous relationship any time soon thanks to her father’s (Colin Quinn) teachings (“Can you imagine playing with the same toy the rest of your life?”). One day she’s assigned an article about Dr. Aaron Connors (Bill Hader), a sports medicine practicioner who’s about to go through an intense surgery. Then through some ups and downs, the two eventually fall for each other. Through the synopsis you can’t really gauge why Trainwreck is great, and that’s one of the biggest drawbacks. You have to be willing to accept the film’s traditional style in order to enjoy its personality. But this film’s been about personality from the beginning.
I’ve seen so many romantic comedies over the years, I’ve been able to break them down into four main components: quirky girl is an outsider for some reason, quirky girl meets guy who changes her life, random man candy to oggle, and the quirky girl becomes the most important person in the film’s world by the end. Unfortunately, Trainwreck has all of these components. It’s completely predictable from beginning to end, but the film would rather you enjoy its components rather than the package as a whole. That’s not necessarily a bad thing by any means when all of the individual pieces are as well put together as they are here.
As Schumer has proven in the past, she’s a comedic dynamo. Couple that with an amazing cast for her to bounce off of, and we’ve got a romantic comedy more grounded than anything in years past. Her charm just oozes off the screen and effects the rest of the cast. Everyone in the film has such a natural chemistry it makes Apatow’s tendency to run his films a bit long all the more bearable. In fact, I wish there was more of her conversations with Brie Larsen as Amy’s sister. There are a bunch of scenes between the two where Brie cracks a laugh, and you can tell that it wasn’t an intentional one. It’s the little things like that which give the film a lot of character. Something that’s always hollow in these romantic comedies.
Speaking of chemistry, Schumer and Hader are magnetic. While Hader’s character could use more development, Hader fills the role with enough quirk that it elevates it from the material. Schumer’s script is amazingly put together too. While there’re some jokes that don’t work, and Judd Apatow’s direction does seep through and you notice a few bits that could’ve been cut for time (and because they weren’t really funny), when the two meet in the middle they knock it out of the park. Like John Cena and Lebron James, for instance. A typical quality of an Apatow directed film are the numerous celebrity cameos from folks you wouldn’t usually see in a movie like this. While a bunch of unfunny cameos are here in spades, Cena and James are almost too perfect. As the two fill the conventional “bad bro date” and “quirky guy’s best friend,” Schumer’s writing mixed with their surprising talent completely blindsides. James’ acting may be a bit stilted, but he gets the best lines in the film (my personal favorite being a Kanye West riff), and I can’t tell you how many times I laughed at John Cena. That guy has a future in comedy. Also, if you wanted to see him naked here’s your chance.
Trainwreck is somehow both traditional and unconventional. I don’t know how the film managed to find a perfect balance between being an entertaining comedy while still dealing an effective romantic push, but there’s so much charm it’s easy to write off a lot of the film’s technical issues. Normally I’m so jaded with films like these, so I would’ve torn into how much like other movies it is. But it’s not. It’s sort of the anti-27 Dresses.
Maybe it’s Amy Schumer’s persona, or maybe it’s how down to Earth it all feels, but when I saw Schumer dancing as a grand romantic gesture at Trainwreck’s end (so predictable, I told you), I couldn’t help but fall in love with her myself.
