Trainwreck (2015)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on July 21, 2015 @ tonymacklin.net.

I don't care if Amy Schumer gets laid.

Or my favorite comedian Lewis Black.

Or Dennis Miller. Although he definitely needs to get laid more.

Or actress Mackenzie Davis. Actually, I might be a little interested in her exploits.

I'm sure, by mutual consent, that Amy Schumer and I would never had even our first "fuckable day."

But Amy Schumer is a hot topic these days.

She has vaulted to the top of the Jewish comic princesses - over Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham. Although, if there were a fight, I'd bet on Sarah or Chelsea. Sarah has 10 years on Schumer. And Chelsea has those spiked heels.

In Trainwreck, Schumer has made a rom.com into a cum.com.

Trainwreck is a meandering trip through shtick and ego with an occasional stopover in humanity. I laughed three times in more than two hours. I was moved once or twice.

We live in absurd marketable times. An omnipresent tv commercial shows a sexy girl lying in the surf with a talking horse on the beach. What is that selling? DIRECTV. Oh, of course.

Sex sells.

In Trainwreck, Amy plays a girl named Amy, who has multiple sex partners and can't even think of commitment. She spends her time buffing and rebuffing.

He boss (Tilda Swinton), at a manipulative magazine called S'Nuff, says that Amy is "funny, and smart and satirical."

But the actual Amy writes tired, lame takes on race and homosexuality. And any attempt at satire lacks edge.

The strongest part of Trainwreck is when the relationship between Amy and Aaron (Bill Hader), a sports doctor, gets serious.

But then it all hurtles off the tracks, when Amy has a sexual encounter with a 16-year old (Ezra Miller). Then the film becomes silly with a totally miscast and miswritten intervention scene.

And Trainwreck dissolves into unadulterated ego, with Amy Schumer dancing lead with the New York Knicks' cheerleaders in a scene of unpure hubris. Hader's tears almost add credibility, but the credibility is as shot as Amar'e Stoudemire's Knicks' career. Stoudemire has since left the Knicks for the Miami Heat. I think the dance scene was too much for him.

The direction by Judd Apatow works half the time. His use of music is effective, but the last third of the film is overblown.

Apatow discovered James Franco in TV's Freaks and Geeks, and he probably should warn Amy Schumer about being overexposed. Franco went through a period of overkill, which ironically has marred his career.

Amy Schumer is an adequate actress, a slick but often sophomoric writer - some of her self-absorption seems like it might be a "look at me" message to her former classmates at Towson University.

She's just on this side of being vapid, which may have add to her general appeal.

Wit is not her forte. Shtick is, and Schumer flaunts shtick.

And in 2015, that's very successful.

© 2000-2023 Tony Macklin