Trainwreck review

She’s the ultimate ladette, but can bed-hopping Amy Schumer find love in this summer’s raunchiest comedy, Trainwreck?

Trainwreck, a gross-out romantic comedy with surprising emotional depth written by and starring Amy Schumer, proves the stand-up comic is a bona-fide movie star.

This represents director Judd Apatow’s first film he also didn’t write. As entertaining as Apatow’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up are, they are also overlong. Trainwreck represents his best work as a director because he isn’t precious about every word.

Under Apatow’s guiding hand, this is very much Schumer’s film. As a comic, Schumer has an assured stage presence, so it isn’t surprising that she is funny, but she is also completely authentic in the more dramatic scenes. This is Schumer’s first lead role in a film, and she handles it like a veteran.

Schumer plays a fictionalized version of herself. Film Amy took to heart her father’s (Colin Quinn) childhood lesson that “monogamy is unrealistic.” As an adult she is a 30-something commitment-phobe who rather have sex with a different guy every night than to form any real connection.

Amy writes for a magazine that’s goal seems to be to reinforce sexist, misogynistic behaviour, but she has a conflicted relationship about it. One character points out that her writing seems to have a satirical edge. The same can be said of the real Amy, who, on her sketch show Inside Amy Schumer, has revealed a knack for biting, acerbic commentary.

When Amy is assigned to write a feature about a sports doctor (Bill Hader), she discovers someone she actually likes. Aaron is smart, sincere, kind and refuses to let her run away from a relationship. In other words, he is everything Amy is scared to embrace.

Schumer and Hader have a relaxed and believable chemistry. Both are comic actors, but don’t simply trade one-liners in scenes together. Their dynamic feels real rather than a plot point.

The script plays with romantic comedy cliches by casting basketball star Lebron James as himself to be Aaron’s quirky best friend. What is even better, is that he is truly funny.

Similarly, WWE wrestler John Cena gets big laughs as one of Amy’s suitors who despite his muscle-bound body, struggles to express his masculinity.

As with all romantic comedies, there is a break up in the third act before the couple inevitably gets back together in the end, but thankful even this cliché is made fresh. Usually the cause of the split is a contrived misunderstanding, but Amy and Aaron’s fight feels like the sort of dispute an actual couple might have.

In terms of the rest of the cast, everyone hits their marks. Ever the chameleon, Tilda Swinton is almost unrecognizable as Amy’s hilariously brash boss.

Brie Larson as Amy’s sister Kim and Quinn as their father help to bring emotional weight to the film.  Their father’s struggles with multiple sclerosis have forced him to move into an assisted-living home. Amy has a close relationship with her father — something her sister Kim resents as she never forgave him for leave their mother.

Amy and Kim’s contentious relationship is portrayed believably. Kim is married with a stepson and is pregnant. This normalcy intimidates Amy and she doesn’t appreciate the pressure from Kim to start her own family.

Amy’s behaviour may be self-destructive, but, refreshingly, Schumer also dismisses the condescending attitude that a lot of married mothers have that their way of life is the correct way for all women.

This isn’t a movie where the female protagonist’s life finally begins because she has a baby. Nor is it that her life begins because she finds a man. Instead Amy learns to take a chance on connecting with another person. It is a more grounded happy ending, but Trainwreck earns it and is all the better for it.

4.5/5

Alec Kerr