Trainwreck: Not (Entirely) The Coarse Comedy You'd Expect
Trainwreck’s trailers and teasers would’ve had viewers expecting a raunchy comedy about a loveably loose lady finding love and not being so sure about it. A feminist anthem of the millennial age. The latter might be true. But at its heart, the film is more of an offbeat, contemporary romance infused with (not defined by) coarse comedy.
I saw the film with a few girlfriends, all of whom echoed the same sentiment when we exited the theater – for the first third or so of the film, none of us were sure if we were going to like it or not. And we were surprised about that. All of us are pretty on board with Amy Schumer’s standup and her sketch show, Inside Amy Schumer, so we assumed liking the movie would be a given.
Why the uncertainty? For the first third of the movie or so, Trainwreck seems to be struggling to decide what it wants to be. While riddled with raunchy/slightly off color jokes, the tone was off for what we’ve come to expect from fast-paced Judd Apatow flicks, a-la Superbad or Knocked Up.
A humorous yet realistic portrayal of an independent, career-driven woman’s sex life is tempered by family heartache, as Amy and her sister struggle to respect each other’s life choices while caring for an ailing and judgmental father. Not to say this plot line shouldn’t have been included – it is heartfelt and rounds out Amy’s character, and is a huge influence in her trajectory. But its more serious tone makes the film’s genre a bit harder to define from the get-go.
Sure, we get to see Amy trick a guy into going down on her and then feigning sleep in order to avoid an encounter with his truly ginormous man bits. And John Cena’s character is a total crack up. There’s nothing more amusing than a giant, ripped dude trying super hard to be masculine and instead ending up accomplishing the opposite.
In other words, the sort of comedy we’d come to expect from the film’s advertisements and Schumer’s media tour didn’t translate to what we were seeing. But that’s not a bad thing.
The source of our confusion perhaps was that the setup is too long – that portion of a film where we get to know the characters, and the tone is set before the main plot arc gets rolling. Once it did get rolling, though, we were totally on board. That moment comes slightly after the introduction of Bill Hader’s character, Aaron, Amy’s love interest.
Their relationship starts off the way it seems all of Amy’s encounters with men (and three women) start off – with a roll, roll, roll in ze hay. (Or, more accurately, ze couch.)
Hilarity ensues when it turns out Aaron actually likes Amy and wants to date her.
From there we get all the awesome stuff that good romantic comedies give us: sweetness, laughter, and a little bit of tension. The film even ends with a big gesture to win back Aaron’s heart. Common, necessary elements to a blockbuster romantic comedy. (Spoilers from here on out)
What’s refreshing is that Schumer and Apatow don’t go about executing these elements in standard ways. The source of the tension, and ensuing temporary breakup, between Amy and Aaron isn’t one of your run of the mill romantic comedy reasons – i.e., someone didn’t get jealous, someone didn’t initiate a really dumb argument as an excuse for a breakup because they were really just afraid of love, etc etc.
Instead, the source of the breakup is more grounded in reality: Amy’s hard partying, somewhat selfish ways started out as fun, but now seem like more a way to keep men at a distance from her. This comes to a head when, instead of supporting Aaron by being present as he accepts an award for his work, Amy leaves the room to take a call from work, and then smokes pot to (presumably) try and alleviate her guilt and stress.
Aaron doesn’t take too kindly to this, so Amy tries to break it off and run. But instead of letting her, because he loves her, he insists that she learn how to talk it out. His invitation to fight it out before bed so they don’t go to sleep angry bites him in the ass as Amy unloads what seems like years’ worth of frustration, maybe directed at him, and maybe not.
In his exasperation, he admits to her that her drinking, smoking and long list of past lovers do, in fact, bother him. To the latter, Amy is totally unapologetic. Bravo. She does, however, see the light that her other habits have been taken to an extreme and takes steps to clean up her act a bit after a night of drinking leads her to almost bang a 16 year old and subsequently lose her job.
Normally after that kind of spat in a romantic comedy, we’d expect the male lead to make some kind of big gesture to win back the girl, like John Cusack in Say Anything. Not so in Trainwreck. Amy slaps on a cheerleading uniform and puts on a big routine on court to both impress Aaron, apologize, and prove to him that she can compromise (prior to this scene, she had a pretty pronounced disdain for cheerleaders.)
Overall, Trainwreck is a solid flick. It might start off a little shaky, but it’s worth the ride. Or you know, the 12 bucks.