Trainwreck is funnier than Judd Apatow’s recent duds, but it’s no less worse. It operates with a staggering incompetence and a queasy perspective, not to mention an unreliable sense of humor. Though it doesn’t quite fail its star, the film does stand out as blandly antithetical to Amy Schumer’s bold and groundbreaking comedic voice.
I’m not quite sure what has happened to Apatow as a filmmaker, but the major element that appears to have been lost is a sense of truth. He’s expressed a sort of progressive conservatism in the past, like in the abortion-avoiding pregnancy comedy Knocked Up, but with it came a heartfelt authenticity. The politics of a director and his work aren’t inherently bothersome, so long as they come from a place that’s rich and fresh and grounded in something real. Catherine Keener and Steve Carell made a beautifully believable (and funny) soulmate combo in The 40 Year-Old Virgin; Linda Cardellini’s endearing cynicism easily careened through the wild high school hi-jinx of Freaks and Geeks.
Trainwreck stars Amy Schumer, a comic versatile both in tone and intent. Despite the many thinkpieces saying otherwise, she’s hardly one thing: her pointed sketch series Inside Amy Schumer can be spiky in its politics, brilliant in its stupidity and warm in its openness. After selling the Trainwreck script, there was instant anticipation as to what she’d be able to bring to a big-budget feature film, especially with Apatow – who recently brought us Girls, a once great show, and who should be acknowledged as the person who redefined comedy film for the new century – behind the camera. Would she be broadly funny? Brazenly feminist? Surprisingly romantic?
Immediately, there’s something off about Trainwreck. Don’t get me wrong – it starts out damn funny. When she’s in her zone, Schumer is a riot: in an early scene, her character, the boozy and (very) sex-positive Amy Townsend, regrettably and drunkenly wakes up in a young Staten Island boy’s room, and City Girl Schumer’s facial reaction is just priceless. Later, she’s recklessly betraying her “relationship” with a muscular-as-ever John Cena, and their dynamic in specific scenes crackles. As in sketch, these isolated moments work.
But the movie is moving in a million directions, and no approach coheres; it either feels too thick or too thin. The Cena character is likely a closeted gay man, mistakenly blurting out “you looked like a dude” to Amy during sex and weirdly turning to homoerotic puns when arguing with a fellow male at a movie. But he’s also interested in countryside monogamy, in settling down with Amy and having kids and living that life. There’s too much to him; the comedy target never makes sense because nothing is committed to. It’s a problem broadly reflective of Trainwreck in the early-going, even at its funniest, and it feeds into the deeper issues that the film runs up against later.
Amy Schumer's comedy is inviting and connective. It’s very often rooted in sexual anecdotes and thoughts, specific to her experiences but universal in its delivery. I kept wanting that from Trainwreck – I kept wanting to feel like I was meant to be on her side. Early on, Apatow tentatively conveys her appeal, and there’s no drastic judgment of her choices. She drinks a lot. She works at a soulless magazine, where her co-writers pitch ideas devoid of anything that doesn’t scream “Headline!” (Lots of decent masturbation and boob jokes here.) As a woman in her late 20s, the character’s life feels appropriately all-over-the-place, and her personality seems, to borrow the characterization again, endearingly cynical.
Then, there’s a sharp turn in what this movie is trying to say – or rather, it figures out a purpose after the string of loosely-threaded jokes and set pieces that makes up the first hour. It’s a dangerous thing when a film is more enjoyable and far smarter when it’s not going anywhere, or when it’s not about anything. But when Amy meets Aaron (Bill Hader), the sports doctor she’s been tasked to profile, Trainwreck comes to embody its name. Initially, it’s amusingly unconventional. Aaron has only slept with three women, while Amy’s number of sexual partners is never mentioned because there are so many; he likes sports and thinks they bring about unity, while she finds them pointless and dumb. They connect, and it shocks Amy, whose life motto is basically Wham Bam Thank You Man (and who, again, really doesn’t like sports). Opposites attract, I guess.
For one thing, the strength of the connection is never especially clear. Hader is a natural actor, and just last year he demonstrated extraordinary ability opposite Kristen Wiig in The Skeleton Twins. But here, he’s lost without a definable character, merely going on “he’s a good guy” and “LeBron James is his deeply concerned friend.” There’s more going on with Amy, both because we spend a great deal more time with her and because Schumer allows the character a sharper comic edge. Put shortly, the two actors don’t mesh especially well. It’s a major bummer.
Eventually, Apatow makes the film’s unsettling conceit clear: we’re not meant to be on Amy’s side until she makes a change. Her understanding of cheerleaders as shallow is wrong. Her drinking is bad. Her sexual freedom is masking a deep loneliness. This narrative direction would be acceptable on its own, but the greater sin here is the imbalance with which the romance is drawn. The fact is that the scale of morality is tilted entirely in Aaron's favor. Not only does it feel a little icky and like unnecessary criticism, but it renders their bumpy relationship far less interesting. Aaron is settled and works with charities and doesn’t like drugs or alcohol much. When Amy dumps out her booze and starts charitably keeping the company of a lonely old man, it’s triumphant in tone – she’s learning to be good.
Apatow’s value judgment drains the complexity and intrigue out of Amy and Aaron’s relationship. But it also undermines his own humor. Early in the film, we meet Amy’s sister Kim, played well by a sadly wasted Brie Larson: she is married to one hell of a dork in Tom (Mike Birbiglia) and is raising his painfully precocious son, Alistair (Evan Brinkman). They’re hilariously ridiculous, and Amy makes fun of them, and the resulting comedy feels effortless. But a stretch of disastrously melodramatic scenes between the two siblings ends in near-parody: Amy realizes that Alistair is a smart, caring and lovably idiosyncratic child, and while Tom may not be hunky or cool, he sure does love Kim. The group shares a hug that’s too cheesy to smell without gagging. It’s a cheap reversal, for one, but Apatow is also essentially condemning our own laughter at their earlier behavior. We saw these characters as Amy saw them – unintentionally funny. But if Amy realizes that perception was wrong, what are we to think? What was the point of laughing at them? Apatow implies not much.
It’s a severe problem of unreliability. While every film should be judged on its own merits, there is something to be said for Schumer’s presence in a film so distanced from her personal work. The contrast is too obvious to ignore. After an intermittently funny first half, Trainwreck turns predominantly dramatic: Amy’s father dies, and she loses her job, and she spoils her blossoming love with Aaron. And Apatow just doesn’t have a handle on it. His direction is tone-deaf, the film flowing clumsily and thus not ringing true.
In-between, he mixes in a lot of off-color gay jokes, even though there’s no gay character outside of John Cena’s caricature, and a few off-color race jokes, even though the only notable characters of color are NBA superstars. Such is Trainwreck. Structurally misjudged and thematically awkward, as a film it definitely doesn’t come together. But the laughs it induces not only fade, but emerge nonsensically on reflection – a clever swagger masking a hollow comedic voice. It’s not quite as cool or profound as it thinks it is, resting as unconvincing and wildly uneven. It’s a shame, because good as Amy Schumer is here, and funny as she often is in spite of it, she really deserved better.
Grade: C-