Having the belief that monogamy isn't realistic from an early age thanks to her father, Amy, a 30-something woman, lives a life of binge-drinking and one-night stands. Believing an uninhibited life free of societies boring romantic commitments is where she finds her sole happiness, Amy begins to question this notion when she meets a charming and very successful sports doctor, Aaron Conners. Judd Apatow's Trainwreck is very much a star vehicle for Amy Schumer, but while the film is quite funny and its intentions are novel, Trainwreck suffers dramatically due to a very unbalanced comedy and Amy Schumer's limited dramatic ability. While I find Amy Schumer funny, her brand of humor grows a tad tiresome with Trainwreck, a film that really becomes one-note in its sense of humor, lacking any rhythm to its narrative that just fields unbalanced and rushed. The film has funny moments for sure, but I couldn't help but feel it ends up taking the quantity over quality approach to comedy, throwing out joke after joke in an effort to see what sticks. I think my biggest problem with Trainwreck is it's being praised for something that it's not, masquerading as a romantic comedy that subverts gender roles and provides a unique perspective. Unfortunately it doesn't actually do much differently, falling into the same traps, being an old-fashioned romantic comedy that just puts Schumer in the archetypal male role. The character's arch are very much by-the-book and how Amy inevitably turns her life around feels a little simplistic given the true nature of her problems. To be fair, there are certainly still things to praise, but the most interesting aspect of Trainwreck is how it uses the character of Amy to capture how people judge others based off of what they are into or how they are, placing them in a nice neat box cause it is easier, instead of actually attempting to try and understand why things are important to different people. Apatow's film has small moments of quiet brilliance though, skewering the double standards of gender, sensationalist media, and the judgmental aspects of society, and while it's certainly his best film in a little while, Trainwreck is never able to overcome its host of other issues.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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