Trainwreck - A Judd Apatow Comedy.
A distinct change from summer action and superhero fare, our last cinematic voyage was Trainwreck, starring and written by Amy Schumer with co-star Bill Hader. It was produced and directed by Judd Apatow, so if you are guessing that the raunch coefficient was fairly high, you’d be right. It’s sort of a Romantic Comedy/Horror movie, at least in my opinion. Anyway, “Amy” (played by Amy) has been convinced from an early age by her father’s philandering behavior, that monogamy sucks and has been out to bed-hop her way through life, being sure that monogamy will never entrap her. Her behavior is getting old, as you would suspect in a Rom-Com. She’s a journalist, writing for a fairly trashy but high-profile magazine, run by an insane bitch Dianna (Tilda Swinton), and her latest sink or swim project is to interview a prominent surgeon Aaron (Bill Hader), a celebrity with a scalpel who fixes the knees of half of the NBA and NFL.
As it turns out, Aaron is really a nice guy in addition to being a good surgeon. He’s the favorite of LeBron James (playing himself) and other sports stars. He doesn’t have a celebrity personality and genuinely wants to do a good job, a big surprise to Amy. Some sparks start to fly, and before long Amy is adding Aaron to her long list of bed partners….but this one’s sorta different. Unlike most of her partners, Aaron likes her as a person and doesn’t seem to be just exploiting her for utilitarian, impersonal sex. Amy doesn’t understand that very well, since she’s used to sex being quick and dirty, with nothing additional to complicate her cynicism. As you probably expect in a Rom-Com, the relationship has to get complicated before anything can be resolved; this Rom-Com doesn’t change that convention. Amy’s conventional sister is encouraging her to settle down and Aaron wants more commitment. Amy doesn’t know how to deal with that. You probably already know that these sort of formulaic movies have one of several predictable outcomes, but in the name of not spoiling, I won’t say which one it is.
Did I like it? Well, sorta yes, sorta no. When I said that it’s a Rom-Com/Horror movie, what I meant is that, if you did date or like Amy, your life would become a horror. She’s such a destructive and self destructive character that, all through the movie, I wanted to run up on screen, grab Aaron by the elbow, and drag him off screen, away from Amy…send him back to fixing sports knees. I don’t know much about Amy Schumer personally, don’t know if she’s doing the time-honored thing of writing a character who’s like her, but damn….if she is, I wouldn’t put it out in public. She’s not a serial killer or anything like that, but she IS about the last person I would want to date. Life would be a perpetual drama. Characters like that populate the world of Judd Apatow, who seems to run a University of Dysfunction, but Amy IS quite a dose. I enjoyed the laughs in the film, Amy plays “herself” quite well, and, as usual, Bill Hader does an excellent job of creating a character, although I do miss him as Stefon and Vincent Price on SNL. The rest of the cast is OK and I can forgive the wooden acting of the sports guys playing themselves. I would not rush to the theater to see this, but it’s amusing enough if your expectations are not too high. It’s a solid 2.5 on my scale, if that ambivalence makes any sense at all. Rotten Tomatoes has it as an 85 for critics and 74 for users but that seems like quite a stretch to me. I’d be somewhere in the 50’s.
