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The problem with clamoring for more woman-led comedies is that actual comedy may be the thing that ends up being left by the wayside. Tina Fey, among others, has railed against the boneheaded dictum that women can’t be funny. But in the current climate of watchfulness — one in which every joke must be constructed and sealed drum-tight so as not to offend anyone, at any time — it’s not enough for a woman just to be funny. Women comics must also be spokespeople: for feminism, for all women, for anyone who might be perceived as oppressed or marginalized in any way. When you look at it that way, being funny is the unfunniest job in the world.
Amy Schumer is ably making her way to the top of this shaky ladder. She can be lacerating, but there’s often something lecture-y about her comedy, as if we’re being made to atone for years of laughing at plain old dumb stuff. That’s the price we pay when we wish for smart comedy, and Trainwreck, if nothing else, strives to be smart.
Trainwreck is Schumer’s first starring movie role; she also wrote the script. And while the picture is occasionally very funny — because when she lets loose, Schumer does have a fantastic, loosey-goosey wiliness — it also feels carefully constructed to make its points, chief among them that men can get away with all kinds of bad or crazy behavior that women can’t. That by itself could be entertaining, if the movie just ran with it. But there’s a much bigger, more insidious problem: Schumer may be the writer and star, but Judd Apatow is the director, and in the end, you can’t escape the feeling that somehow Schumer’s vision has been wrestled into the template that nearly all of his movies, even the best ones, follow: one in which the comforts of conventional partnerships and family life are what we should all aspire to, even though we may pretend to be interested in tawdry things like casual sex and excessive partying. Apatow and Schumer probably believe they’ve made a feminist picture, but the reality is something different. This is a conventional movie dressed as a progressive one.
Schumer plays Amy, a writer at a slick lads’ magazine in New York. (Tilda Swinton, in a rare comic role, is killer as the ruthless editor-in-chief.) Amy is determinedly uncommitted and noncommittal; her parents’ marital breakup years before led her to doubt whether monogamy is even possible. She favors one-night stands and has lots of them.
Amy also drinks too much, and sometimes she wakes up uncertain as to how she found her way between any given set of sheets. Between assignations, assorted life issues intervene: Amy has to navigate an affectionate but sometimes strained relationship with her sister (Brie Larson), while the foul-mouthed, racist father she adores (Colin Quinn) is in ill health and has had to go into assisted living.
Amy could probably just keep sleeping with random guys forever, but in the line of duty she meets a sweet, successful, super-nerdy orthopedic surgeon, Bill Hader’s Aaron. She falls for him, irrationally and almost immediately. And because she doesn’t see herself as the type who could settle down with just one person, she proceeds to make his life miserable.
The start of Trainwreck is promising. We think we’re getting a movie where a woman gets to enjoy the company of lots of partners without remorse or shame. But the trouble signs show up early: We have no idea why Amy is attracted to one guy or another, even just for a night. She tackles her sex life with grim determination, and her lack of engagement — emotional or sexual — exposes a sneaky and unpleasant thread of conservatism: The movie wants us to buy the idea that sex really is best with your One True Love, and anything outside that is just a cheap substitute.
Hader, meanwhile, is a charming leading man; his goofy smile is sexy as hell, a surprisingly potent secret weapon. LeBron James and Amar’e Stoudemire show up, in small roles, as themselves. James, in particular, hams it up and has a blast.
Schumer has the harder job of shouldering the film, and there’s no doubt that she’s game. But her character is at times so badly behaved — toward a man she supposedly loves — that it’s hard to be on her side. Trainwreck pretends to be frank about sex from a woman’s point of view, yet it refuses to reckon with how ferocious and unmanageable sex really is.
