Ten years after “Knocked Up” -director Judd Apatow’s story of a schlubb who gets a gorgeous girl pregnant after a one night stand, the thing that remains most clearly is: how realistic it was. Nothing in it beggared the imagination, it was a female friendly sex comedy that functioned as heightened realism.
The thing about “Trainwreck”, Apatow’s latest movie starring Amy Schumer as a slut who falls in love, it does more than beggar the imagination, it rings false from one end of the movie to the other, “Antman” is more realistic. Amy Schumer, the Comedy central phenom fat chick as wannabe sex symbol, stars as a writer for a muckraking Gawker like periodical while sleeping her way through Manhattan in emulation of her father (Colin Quinn -around thirty years to young for the role). On assignment to interview doctor to sports stars (LeBron James has a biggish role as himself) Aaron (Bill Hader), she jumps his bones, tries to dump him, imprints on him, suffers for half an hour, gets a cover of Vanity Fair, and lives happily ever.
Does that sound funny? While there are some nice little zingers along the way, it is a dramedy that works at neither end: she loses everything and then gets it all back half an hour later. Plus, LeBron is her buddy, LeBron, Chris, Mathew Broderick and Marv Albert have an intervention, and at the end James Dolan lends out MSG and the Knick City Dancers to Amy so she can get Bill Hader back again. Happens to me every day.
I have no idea what these guys thought they were doing with this, intermittently amusing, movie. Amy has managed to become a big star and stop being a big star in the same breadth. Movies don’t have to be realistic but they have to keep true to their world: you can say everybody on earth has to wear weighted boots because gravity isn’t working but once you show somebody not wearing weighted boots, that’s when you become unbelievable. The story doesn’t hold faith with its own conceit, nothing in it really makes sense. Their big fight is nonsense. Their reconciliation is well beyond nonsense,: she writes a laudatory story about the Doctor for the cover of “Vanity fair” and he still doesn’t bother to call her up and reconcile: cmon guys. Basically, they stuck her stand up on top of a typical Apatow the importance of family movie.
Look, it is a touch McGuffin to complain but if nothing rings true it is just a fairy tale Amy told herself. It doesn’t have anything to do with life.
Grade: C-