Trainwreck (2015)

trainwreck-2015

It’s nice to see Judd Apatow break free from his formula of a dopey slacker falling in love with the perfect woman. This time around, Apatow has the fresh mind of Amy Schumer who helps deliver one of the most human romance comedies of the year. “Trainwreck” is a film with an array of emotionally gray characters filled with flaws and scars from their youth, and still can’t quite grasp the idea of adulthood quite yet. Schumer is bold enough to take on the lead role of character Amy, a magazine writer who is comfortable in her rut, and doesn’t mind aiming for the bare minimum in both her career and her love life.

After her womanizing father left her mom for another woman when she was a child, she and her sister found themselves in different paths. Amy has embraced her dad’s idea of promiscuity, sticking to a life that involves sleeping with various men and clinging to a strict code that involves her leaving the man before she remotely gets attached to him. Things begin to change when she’s handed an assignment to profile and follow around a prominent sports doctor named Aaron, and begins to realize her code might not be as rock solid as she thought. As with most Apatow comedies, “Trainwreck” is human, it’s hilarious, and it’s always raunchy. But Schumer grasps on to Apatow’s comedy formula by making the raunch in to an element that is a necessity to the story.

Schumer depicts Amy as something of a out of the box female protagonist, one who has a healthy sex life, has zero aspirations for a family, and is prone to heavy weed smoking. Amy herself is a flawed and tragic character who has bought in to her dad’s idea of promiscuity as a means of keeping one’s life from being strapped down to an unhappy relationship. This brings her in to conflict with her little sister Kim, who not only resents their dad, but has happily entered in to a relationship with a man and his son (from another marriage), both of whom are odd, but offer the stability she craves. Brie Larson is fantastic as Schumer’s little sister, who is consistently at war with her idea of the perfect lifestyle, and inevitably causes resentment from Amy when she begins to feel left behind in favor of Kim’s growing loving family.

Bill Hader is once again a fine actor and comedic presence, who begins to fall in love with Amy, and is forced to decide if she’s good for him, or damaging to his growing career as a doctor. The pair has palpable tension both sexually and romantically, and they keep “Trainwreck” incredibly compelling and raucously funny. Apatow allows much of the cast to ad lib, prompting some surefire moments of hysterics, and there is thankfully not a single terrible performance in the bunch. Folks like Lebron James, Tilda Swinton, Colin Quinn, and John Cena are absolutely hysterical, and contribute to Schumer’s very down to Earth tale about a woman who’s become a victim of her own flaws, and finds a reason to overcome her past when adulthood introduces itself.