It's one thing to conquer the stage as a stand-up comic. It's considerably more difficult to take that comedy club clout and turn it into a successful movie career.
Just ask all the people who have failed to do it: For every Tim Allen, you'll find half a dozen failures like Jay Leno (anybody remember the straight-to-video Collision Course?), Ellen DeGeneres (who probably prays you have completely forgotten her 1996 disaster Mr. Wrong), or Rosanne Barr (who bombed spectacularly opposite Meryl Streep in She-Devil).
So it's particularly bold for the white-hot Amy Schumer to title her big-screen starring debut Trainwreck. In all honesty, that might have been the perfect name for most of the other movies I just mentioned. But Trainwreckis actually something of a triumph: a film that is true to Schumer's raunchy roots and yet also a vehicle that shows she has genuine skill as both a screenwriter and an actress.
This is not merely two hours of reheated jokes lifted from her stand-up material. It's a well-crafted, cheerfully off-center romantic comedy that should please Schumer's devotees and win her many new admirers.
As you may know Schumer's brand of comedy is what they would have called "blue" back in the days of Don Rickles and Phyllis Diller. She enjoys dancing on the edge, making her audiences chuckle and cringe at the same time as she discusses what it's like to be a 34-year-old woman dealing with the complexities of sex, body image, gender stereotypes and the entertainment industry's obsession with youth and beauty.
Many of those topics come into play in Schumer's screenplay for Trainwreck in which she has cast herself as Amy Townsend, a features writer for S'Nuff Magazine. It's one of those hipper-than-thou publications that runs stories like "Ugliest Celebrity Kids Under 6" and "Are You Gay, Or Is She Just Boring?"
Amy's loony editor Dianna (wonderfully played by TildaSwinton) sends her off to profile a celebrated sports medicine expert named Aaron Connors, even though Amy absolutely hates sports. She does not, however, hate Aaron, played by "Saturday Night Live" alum Bill Hader, even though Aaron is so straight-laced that his idea of a killer jam is Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl."
Before long, Amy is mixing business with pleasure. Amy is also mixing various kinds of alcohol with pots and pills, which is not always a winning recipe for her daily life. As a child, she watched her parents' marriage disintegrate and she believed her dad's lectures on the impossibility of remaining monogamous. So Amy has spent her entire adult life tumbling from bed to bed, occasionally pretending to have a steady boyfriend or fake her way through a date or two.
If she's going to build a relationship with Aaron, Amy will be forced to change course and re-evaluate her values - or complete lack of them. Schumer has taken a familiar romantic comedy concept and reinvigorated it with sassy humor, razor-sharp one-liners and a surprising amount of heart.
Trainwreck delivers all the punchy jokes you would expect from Schumer, but the movie's undercurrent of sincerity and seriousness may catch you off-guard. Amy's interactions with her disapproving sister, played by Brie Larson, and her ailing dad, played by Colin Quinn, are both funny and unexpectedly bittersweet.
Schumer has taken at least as many chances with Trainwreck's darker side as she has with its gross-out gags and satiric sex scenes. As it turns out, Schumer has both the comic and dramatic chops to make these various tones work together.
This is a film that's raunchy and edgy, yet still finds room in its soul for a salute to the Partridge Family. Amy Schumer, I think I love you.
