Amy Schumer is comedy’s “it” girl right now. Her brand of comedy, which is less about telling jokes and more about regaling her sexual escapades, real or made up, has taken the nation by storm. But when you get past the “shock” of an attractive blond woman with a cutesy face talking about anal sex in the back of Toyota, what you are really left with is a female version of Dane Cook, circa 2002. And we all know how that turned out.
In Trainwreck, Schumer brings her “irreverent” comedy to the big screen in a story that is supposed to be about a woman named Amy and how her personal life is such a mess due to her rampant sex, alcohol and drug use. Instead, what audiences are getting is a toothless romantic comedy that is less an actual train wreck, and more of minor inconvenience for travelers. You know, when the train just stops on the track for whatever reason, be it a shift change, or loss of power. Nobody gets hurt, but everybody on board has their time wasted. Whatever, it’s not a wreck, and neither is this movie.
Schumer’s cinematic Amy is a writer for a magazine called S’nuff (there might be a joke there, I’m really not sure). She and her bullpen mates, including Vanessa Bayer, Randall Park, Jon Glaser, and Ezra Miller, work under the absurd thumb of Dianna (Tilda Swinton), and when Amy is assigned a story about a successful sports surgeon, she begrudgingly takes the assignment, though she hates sports (Might be a joke here too, it’s been done too many times before to know for sure).
Amy’s personal life involves casual sex, binge drinking, and drug use, so we are told often, but seldom shown. She also has a “on-again” relationship with Steven (John Cena), and has sex with others on the side. Her father (Colin Quinn) drilled into her at a young age that relationships and monogamy are stupid (as he was leaving her mother) and Amy and her sister Kim (Brie Larson) have taken decidedly different paths in life based on this lesson. Kim married a guy (Mike Birbiglia) with a young son (Evan Brinkman) and became a good step-mother. Her judging of Amy, and both girls dealings with their father as his health deteriorates, is the foundation for the changes that are to come in the film.
Amy meets Aaron (Bill Hader), the sports surgeon whose client list includes Amar’e Stoudamire and LeBron James, among many, many other popular athletes that are mentioned, but not shown. Against all odds, the two hit it off and Amy finds herself falling for the doctor, which creates the balance of the conflict in Trainwreck.
Unfortunately, the film (if you can’t tell) suffers by not actually expositing Amy’s train wreck of a life. It’s implied, and while she has three or four on-screen sex scenes, each one awkward and mined hard for maximum laughs, she is shown drunk maybe three times, and high twice. This is not a train wreck. This is the life of a millennial. The conflicts that Amy has to overcome both within and without are all taken from better romantic comedies, and when you get down to it, Trainwreck is a pedantic, middle of the road romcom that hinged on one thing: Schumer’s wildness, to separate itself, but instead, chose to go the other way and “tell” rather than “show” what a train wreck life really looks like. I mean, from the start, we are told that Amy is a writer for a magazine, but we never see her actually write, and her one interview with the Aaron is more like a first date, and the montage that follows is dating and not any kind of journalism. Schumer might as well have written herself as an astronaut, as her career choice — while used purely to get she and Aaron together — is all but forgotten by the second act.
It also begs to be mentioned that many of the funniest bits in the commercials and trailers didn’t even make the final cut of the film, which is sad, as it could have used more actual comedy, and not the implied “hilarity” of Hollywood’s new Dane Cook.
Honorable mention goes out to LeBron James, who shockingly steals the show in every scene that he’s in, and Bill Hader for bringing his “A” game here, showing the world that he can be a leading man, without being the “silly” one. Both men had to work hard to prop up the one trick pony that is Schumer, and when a professional basketball player — hell, even a professional wrestler in John Cena — are out performing you in the movie that you wrote, maybe lead actress isn’t your calling.
Trainwreck is a rare miss for director Judd Apatow, who, even when he’s off, as in 2012’s This Is 40, he still finds a way to create a fun film with heart. Trainwreck has a heart, but it’s so mired in romcom cliche that nobody cares by the time the credits roll. Amy Schumer might have critics laughing with her stand up and her now-defunct Comedy Central show, Inside Amy Schumer, but Trainwreck proves that even Hollywood has some standards. And Amy Schumer doesn’t come close to meeting them.
Trainwreck is rated R and is in theaters nationwide on July 17.
