Trainwreck
That it was.
Don’t go see this movie, not unless it’s ninety degrees and you want good a/c, not unless your standards are so low you’ve got time for good.
I certainly don’t.
With a cornucopia of entertainment options at my fingertips I don’t want to waste time before I die. I want to eat up the best, which there’s a whole history of. Used to be it was locked up, behind gates, but now I can hear every song ever recorded online and see every movie and to waste time at formulaic crap like “Trainwreck” frustrates me to the point where I’m not so concerned about getting my money back, but my TIME!
Amy Schumer. The funniest new comedienne to hit the boards in half a decade. Maybe the funniest COMEDIAN!
And that’s important, the battle of the sexes. You see it at affairs like this. The country is run by men who don’t understand women, but nearly seventy percent of the attendees in Century City were females. And they came out in abundance. I literally got the last seat left in the upper deck (and no one wants to sit in the lower deck, it’s the equivalent of Siberia, only close to the screen…Equatorsville?)
Going to the movies is a frustrating experience. We live in an on demand culture. And to have to be there at an appointed time and experience twenty minutes of commercials is to be infuriated to the point where you want to yell back at the screen. At least at the ArcLight they only have two trailers. But there’s no respect for the audience at the AMC. I get it, we’re a captive audience. You can expose me to previews for movies I’m completely unaware of. It’s not the seventies, wherein films permeated the culture. Did you know there was a new film with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey as sisters? Get ready for the hype, it’s not arriving until Christmas.
Kind of like with “Trainwreck.” We’ve been hearing about it since 2014. And unlike “Pulp Fiction,” it was not worth the wait.
Judd Apatow seems to have lost the plot. His films are always twenty minutes too long and infrequently funny. I’m sitting in the theatre wanting to laugh but there are no guffaws. Is this a comedy or a drama?
As for the story arc…
High concept dreck. Party girl falls in love with real guy. Literally, just that simple.
Now I know Amy’s act is based on playing the field, being a guy’s girl, talking raunchy and doing the do. But unlike Lisa Lampanelli, who’s the Queen of Mean 24/7, in this flick Amy shows her sensitive side. And her intellectual side. So many sides you’d think she was Sybil. If this film is autobiographical, Schumer is an enigma.
Amy Schumer flew on my radar because of her tour-de-force at the Charlie Sheen roast.
That’s right, in today’s world, if you hit it over the fence, we’re all ears, we want to glom on to you. Because we’re inundated with mediocrity. People who test the waters before they speak and are more interested in being famous than talented. Schumer hung it out so far, not worried whether you liked her or not, that you clung to her. Sheer authenticity and balls in a world laden with phoniness.
And then there was her performance on Howard Stern, where Apatow discovered her. Amy was real in a way so many are not. She could be funny, but could also reveal her truth. But this does not make her a movie star.
How come everybody wants to be something else? Isn’t it good enough that you do one thing well? Chris Rock has never been great in a movie, but he’s the best funny man plying the boards. Sure, Jerry Seinfeld had one of the best TV shows ever, but the truth is the genius was injected by Larry David, who’s great at creating TV shows, most notably his own, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but is not good in front of a live audience.
But everybody wants to be something bigger. Kinda like Marc Maron. He’s got one of the biggest podcasts extant, he interviews the President, but leveraged this to star in his own IFC show. Hey Marc, are sitcoms still a thing? Does anybody know what channel IFC is? Does anybody even surf through the unknown stations now that there are 500? Are you building a resume or trying to capture the zeitgeist?
That’s what Amy Schumer did, she was the woman of the moment.
And then the media had to remind us again and again for nearly a year.
Make me puke. I was already sold, now you’re turning me off.
But when I saw the good reviews I decided to go anyway.
And what I found was that Bill Hader is the best he’s ever been in a flick.
And I finally get that woman Vanessa Bayer, who seems to be overacting on SNL but fits naturally here.
And who knew Colin Quinn would ever survive “Remote Control”? He’s great here, until he dies.
But Amy…
She’s dieted down to the point where she’s somebody else. She does shtick where she claims to be 160 pounds and still f___able, but here she looks just like everybody else.
She picks up every man, but works at a lowbrow magazine and then sells an article to “Vanity Fair”? Isn’t that like Artie Lange publishing a story in the “New Yorker”? How does that work?
It doesn’t, which is why this film doesn’t either.
The arc is so overworked, such a cliche, that you almost wince. We know she’s gonna fall in love with the good guy from the moment she meets him. We know they’re going to be together in the end.
So there’s no tension.
There are moments. With LeBron James evidencing cheapness.
But when Marv Albert does his shtick, you wish he and his toupee were banished from the media. Chris Evert is a wonder, after all it is a girls’ movie, we need more of her instead of Amar’e Stoudemire.
That’s right, there are funny moments, but when the big cheerleader scene happens at the end you’re reminded of “Slumdog Millionaire,” where they dance during the credits, not while the plot is still unfolding. That Oscar winner specialized in confounding us. But there are no surprises in “Trainwreck.”
And you wonder why I’m wasting time writing about it.
Just call me a constant warning to avoid the industrial hype complex. With standards so low it cannot be trusted. It’s a bandwagon of low-level taste that cannot be respected, you have to be brain-dead to pay attention to it.
But in a world where it’s so hard to get your message across, the old formula works to an extent. We want to know where to spend our time. And with media whored out to any celebrity who’ll give access, and every denizen believing they’re a social media star, we don’t know where to turn, we’re confused.
If something great happens, certainly in film, where the barrier to entry is so high, where a flick is expensive and it’s nearly impossible to get distributed, you’ll hear about it.
“Trainwreck” will have lousy word of mouth. They got people in the theatre opening day, but business will fall off thereafter.
Do me a favor. Respect yourself. Ignore the audience. Go for the brass ring.
Amy, make a movie about the tragedy of your relationship with Anthony Jeselnik, someone you were in love with who wasn’t in love with you.
Or make a movie about your imperfections, not being the most beautiful girl in the world but making it on your smarts and humor.
Make a movie about hitting on someone above your level and failing.
Give us some truth.
Because there’s almost none in “Trainwreck.”
And I was looking for it.
Or at least some laughs.
