'Trainwreck' Review: Set a Date With Amy Schumer
by Andy Neuenschwander
In "Trainwreck," Amy Schumer plays a version of herself who sees relationships with others as a waste of time and values her own independence and self-reliance. Ultimately the movie version of Amy learns a lesson about trusting other people, but when it comes to her own movie, Schumer could have taken a tip from her fictional self.
Most of "Trainwreck" is delightfully refreshing, as we watch Amy live the stereotypical bachelor life, only as a single woman in New York instead of a single man. She bounces from hookup to hookup, only spending more than one night with Stephen (John Cena), who turns out to be more into her than she is into him.
The confidence with which Amy conducts her sexual exploits is a breath of fresh air in a Hollywood genre usually filled with female characters who are bogged down by sex instead of liberated by it. Whereas sex is usually the thing that complicates a relationship in a rom-com, in "Trainwreck" it's usually how Amy's relationships start.
Things start to shift when Amy, a magazine reporter, writes a feature piece on sports doctor Aaron (an especially charming Bill Hader) and finds herself being wooed by him despite her efforts to keep it casual. Meanwhile, Amy must deal with family pressures as her married sister becomes pregnant and the two find themselves at odds over their father, who is confined to a nursing home.
There's a lot here that makes "Trainwreck" seem like a deeply personal project for Schumer: her own father suffers from MS, which her fictional father (played by Colin Quinn) also has. Schumer has a sister in real life who writes on her show and helped produce this movie, and their parents did indeed divorce when they were young. Those familiar with Schumer's stand-up comedy will also recognize some moments in the movie as based on her bits, including a story about a terribly boring baby shower.
If there's a flaw to "Trainwreck," it's that Schumer didn't heed her own character's cries of self-reliance and had Judd Apatow direct the film. Apatow has a great track record with R-rated comedies, which have been failing at the box office of late, so the choice makes sense. However, "Trainwreck" suffers from a frequent Apatow problem: the man simply doesn't know how to pace a movie. There are scenes here that aren't particularly necessary (and some that, due to less than stellar performances by LeBron James and John Cena, aren't that funny either) that could be cut, but weren't. As a result, "Trainwreck" runs a little over two hours when comedies really should be closer to 90 minutes...especially one this simple in narrative.
Still, that's nitpicking a movie that provides consistent if not guffawing laughs throughout and a few big ones here and there as well. Schumer has already been putting out brilliant work in the third season of "Inside Amy Schumer," and "Trainwreck" will serve to only strengthen her case as one of the funniest people in Hollywood today.