Trainwreck
Comedienne Amy Schumer ventures into personal cinema.
Amy Schumer (the eponymous trainwreck) does have a verbal dexterity. The film demonstrates her linguistic fluidity in offending people, creatively — beyond doubt. She has choice words for all kinds of people and social occasions — close-minded, borderline thuggish remarks. They oft amuse — in a safe, sandboxed environment of filmed entertainment. Her body language is similarly twitchy, impatient, quick-to-judge; as if assertive.
Obviously, you see such behavior in male-driven comedies on a regular basis, so criticizing female-led movie with that kind of humor, you enter tricky ground. Still, it’s a romantic comedy, with all its appendage. Your ultimate appreciation of the movie depends on whether you enjoy a skewed, very personal comedy of manners (you see, it’s mostly about Amy Schumer and her cognitive filter) with vacuous humor and mockery-infused worldviews. And whether you share Schumer’s sensibilities, which are pop-leaning, a bit trashy and gossip-magaziney. Both attributes seem irrelevant and non-groundbreaking, except that they’re enveloped in a very subjective spin on the usual humor. You may not really appreciate that; nevertheless just roll with it (during the screening), trying to be entertained. Schumer’s comedy seems to come from a non-enviable place of a not-even-masked insecurity and attention deficit disorder — which most comedy that I know (and don’t really appreciate) springs from, anyway. It’s not a movie for people uninterested in this type of vulnerability, social glibness and popular taste, for sure.
The film makes fun of glossy magazines, even if it shares their mentality. Schumer works here for a bro-oriented publication tellingly named S’Nuff — which is implausibly run by an ever-splendid Tilda Swinton. The film carries a slight thematic weight (it’s about leading active social life in a city, cherishing pop-cultural awareness, and promoting Amy Schumer). Yet it comes with a cinematic pedigree — Judd Apatow directs; the aforementioned T. Swinton stars; also, Ezra Miller shows up. You would dismiss it immediately, were it not for it featuring — repeat— a female comic performer, who doubles as a screenwriter, in a central role. Which ticks the female agenda, but isn’t rare these days (recently Spy, Hot Pursuit and other clones of Bridesmaids); a bonus that counts only if you watch movies for superficially political reasons.
The heroine’s lifestyle, social circle, interests, beliefs— all cringe-inducing (not the part where she casually sleeps with various men — which is socially conscious, politically-engaged; also just a reality). But you may not care to watch the travails of a too-ordinary woman living in New York, whose life consists of hooking up, meeting family and friends, dining out, working in a dubious job, and dating a medical practitioner (who is interested in her, somehow). Not much else goes on. A grown-up version of sorority mentality does she share; the flick’s poster captures that perfectly. Essentially, her character just cares about herself; her personal relations, sexuality and private emotions; top priority is to find cinematically-viable ways to show and comment on those. The pinnacle of her existence is having an article accepted to Vanity Fair or such. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, personal is political. But should you care? I certainly don’t.
Her rich sex life was a big part of the story. Exposed male backs were a running joke in one-night-stand scenes (female nudity was obviously absent, for a change). A long sex scene with a bodybuilder (John Cena), who was comfortably placed on top of her, where he provided live commentary about his ongoing sexual performance, was quite droll in seeing what could be imagined as happening in other people’s bedrooms. His way of threatening the other guy with homosexual innuendo, at a cinema screening, was amusing; after that, Schumer nicely ended the relationship. The movie at which that insult-exchange happened was a fleeting parody of presumably more ambitious films (that sticker just because it came in black-and-white, and had an off-kilter subject matter of dog-walking).
Tilda Swinton was regrettably used in just 3 or 4 scenes. She played a forceful, blunt-talking chief editor of that gossip magazine (S’Nuff — it’s worth reminding), power-dressing in a very misjudged way. She sprayed her skin orange tan and colored her hair blonde, to finish the lowly look; but honestly, even that couldn’t suppress her natural charisma and elegant composure. Ezra Miller was interning in her magazine, where Schumer had a jokey way of completely ignoring and condescending him. Their eventual, drunk-and-drugged attempt at sex was quite over the top. Bill Hader played a quirky surgeon with a TV comedian’s radiant personality. LeBron James and other secondary players (friends and family) represented the usual assortment of strenuously trying-to-be-fun people one always sees in b/romantic comedies. Despite Schumer’s constant flirting with the usual vulgarity (a staple in modern comedies), the film turned out to be disgustingly sentimental (every talk with a father and an eulogy at his funeral; Schumer’s never-in-doubt commitment to a relationship with Hader). You get that Schumer is indeed a resourceful comedian. It’s that cinematic format doesn’t suit her; there’s a whole world for TV comedy out there — where her routine fits best.
