Trainwreck (4/5 Stars)

The first scene illustrates the delights and detriments of this movie aptly enough. It is a flashback from the 1980s (you can tell by the video camera film stock) in which a father explains to his two daughters why mommy and daddy are getting divorced. The father explains that monogamy is unrealistic and gives an example of a daughter’s favorite doll. “Now imagine,” he explains, “you can play with that and only that doll for the rest of your life. Would you like that?” His daughter shakes her head. The point is struck home but the father continues with a list of scenarios in which other dolls may be preferable to play with. First of all it should be noted that Colin Quinn plays the father. Colin Quinn is not an actor. He is a tried and true standup comedian that always plays himself. That is to say he employs no impersonations in his act. In fact this might be his first film role ever. 2^nd: His delivery in this scene is funny in a standup comedian way. It gets a lot of laughs. It also however is not a realistic scene. Any other father if he had the balls to explain the unrealism of monogamy at all would not have gone on to illustrate an absurd amount of examples to get the point across. Such is “Trainwreck,” a movie full of standup comedians telling a lot of jokes that are very funny but take away in some parts the reality of the scenes. This is not a good movie in several ways but I feel I must give it four stars on priniciple given how much I laughed during it. It is a comedy.

Judd Apatow directed it. Amy Schumer wrote and stars as the titular trainwreck, a woman that drinks too much and sleeps with way too many men. The cast is composed of a lot of people who probably would not have done a movie but for this particular writer and director. In a small role as a homeless man outside her apartment is Dave Attell, another veteran stand up comedian. The aforementioned Colin Quinn plays her nursing home bound cantankerous father. Mike Birbiglia (another stand up) plays the fiancé of her non-trainwreck sister. And there are a couple of cameos by John Cena and Lebron James that aren’t really cameos. That is to say Lebron James is playing himself yes but in the best friend role to the romantic lead (Bill Hader), his surgeon. It is very funny but also odd because there is the standard cameo joke: Hey there’s Lebron James! And then he just stays around for many scenes and has thoughts and feelings as if he were a real person or something. The movie tries to have it both ways and since it is mainly funny and this is a comedy it works. But it also does not work because if Lebron James is a real character than the cameo joke should not be there. In a way I am arguing for less funny right now for more slow burn impact later. It should be noted that Amy Schumer does not regularly make movies. She makes sketch comedy and before that was a stand up comedian. That explains that.

Amy (the character’s name is Amy because why not?) works for a dumb lad mag. Her strange and boorish boss, played by Tilda Swinton, assigns her to a piece about a sports surgeon because Amy has absolutely no interest in sports and thinks that they are dumb and Swinton thinks that this dynamic will lend the piece conflict and suspense. Bill Hader plays the surgeon. Over a couple of interviews they get into bed in an absurdly quick time (not really his idea). The couple does not so much have chemistry together as the scenes they are in are just consistently funny. Judd Apatow has always tried to insert an emotional center to his movie and generally succeeds in doing so (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People). But here it any sort of emotional catharsis generally falls flat. Let me elaborate on that a little more in a theoretical sense.

A counterintuitive side effect of the ever-expanding role of women in cinema is the ever-brighter portrayal of men. What greater paragons of masculinity can be found then in Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaughy of Tina Fey’s “30 Rock” or (especially) Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson of Amy Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation.” And when Kristen Wiig wrote her masterpiece “Bridesmaids,” her romantic foil played by Andy O’Dowd was a nice, smart, and mature guy. And when this year Amy Schumer wrote “Trainwreck,” she too created a romantic foil played by Bill Hader who is also a nice, smart, and mature guy. In fact, he’s a surgeon, physically attractive (read tall), and rich. And I suspect if I bothered to watch more stuff written by women there would be more examples than these four.

What does this mean? Well it is practical. As a writer it is not atypical to write the love story from the point of view of your own gender. Really, it would feel weird not to. And given that the character is generally informed by one’s own experiences it is not unusual that the main character is more complex than the romantic opposite. Given that most stories follow a hero’s journey type of format where the main character starts one way, goes through a crisis, learns something or doesn’t, and changes for better or worse, it makes sense for most of the personality defects to be on the side of the main character. It can also be said that we tend to idealize the people we are in love with playing down whatever bad traits they have and focusing on the good ones or at least the ones that make us a better person (which would also be useful to the plot).

But I have also heard many charges of sexism when this dynamic is played out in the typical Adam Sandler comedy or the the like wherein a fashionable, smart, mature woman who spends several hours in the gym everyday is interested in a fat immature slob with a fear of commitment. This speaks to a sense of masculine entitlement. Now I wouldn’t rule sexism out entirely (especially in the employment ratio of writers and directors) but am far more willing to believe that this more about many cases of individual incompetence as opposed to a conspiracy. In other words, most people are just mediocre and most romantic comedies have this dynamic because most writers are men. There is not a vast Hollywood conspiracy dictating that guys who lack amibition in business and/or health deserve perfect women. Exhibit A for this is Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck,” in which a chubby, immature, and too promiscuous woman becomes the object of affection for a smart, successful, and talented surgeon. He’s a nice guy and not stupid so there is no particular reason for him to like the main character other than the old “Adam Sandler” reason: this is her movie. See it works both ways and we will probably see more and more of it. Perhaps it will be so equal someday that women will start to appreciate being portrayed so well the way I happen to like Fey’s, Poehler’s, Wiig’s, and Schumer’s idealistic view of guys (mainly because it is so very rare to see them that way).