TRAINWRECK

Trainwreck-Amy-Schumer-and-Bill-Hader.87k

TRAINWRECK lives up to its name in lots of ways, its major crash coming from its bloated length where it derails into the siding of sentimentality, a destination that it was on track to bypass.

Amy Schumer plays Amy, a journalist for a soft porn smut rag whose root rat father instilled an ingrained detestation towards monogamy. Unbridled in her promiscuity and as commitment phobic as the next bloke, Amy is the son her father never had. Except she doesn’t like sports.

So when she is assigned to do a story on a surgeon specialising in sports injuries she is like a duck out of water, more so when this little duck screws the quack, and the doc wants to pursue a relationship.

She already has a sex buddy, a bed bestie, in the form of condom full of walnuts, Steven, played by John Cena. She boozes, belches and bonks like a bloke and that’s the apparent homoerotic attraction for Steve.

Prurient and promiscuous Amy may be, but she is also perversely prudish, preferring fully clothed sex. Is it a body image problem, a defence against intimacy or an expedience for sack evacuation post ejaculation?!

Amy Shumer, who wrote the screenplay, is an attractive screen presence with an abrasive tongue, definitely not one for sugar coated cutesiness. Her verbal barbs are rapid fire and unchecked like an eloquent Tourette’s sufferer.

There’s a lot that’s funny, some in a way that the truth can be cringingly funny, like her mimicking the male propensity to post coital coma. There is plenty however that is unfunny in a crude, callow, shallow and witless way.

Director Judd Apatow has created a career and a cult status from movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked-up, and This is 40, which are tossed salads of gross out, politically incorrect and zeitgeist commentary.

Comedy should not necessarily be pretty but when its ugly and in spite of itself, it loses traction, and there is a spiteful aspect to this screen story. And by this I am not referring to the  dissing of Anne Hathaway or the ferocious fourth wall roasting throwaway of Woody Allen. These moments are actually carried with good humour and are rascally risque.

Amy has an excellent straight man in Bill Hader, bearing the brunt of her in your face behaviour and verbiage.

Tilda Swinton as Amy’s editor at the rag almost plays a parody of herself playing herself to the point that at first some may think its someone else channeling Tilda!

And there’s a movie within the movie starring Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei with a puppy love theme that could be the core of a thesis on subtext.

A shorter version would have sharpened the show, the whole kit and caboodle carries too much unfunny freight that the comedy caboose shunts it into a holding yard for the cargo to curdle.