Trainwreck is a romcom as written and directed by Amy Schumer, the American comedy prodigy whose Comedy Central sketch show is properly hilarious and transgressive, from what I’ve seen. Indeed, if nothing else, I beseech you to watch one particular sketch, as viewable on YouTube, where a group of famous Hollywood actresses gather to celebrate one of their number’s ‘last fuckable day’, explained as follows: ‘In every actress’s life, the media decides when you’ve finally reached the point you are not believably fuckable any more….’
So my hopes for this film were sky-high. My hopes were that it would take the standard, misogynist romcom tropes and give them the pitiless thrashing they so deserve. But to say this lacks the courage of its convictions doesn’t get near it, as I’m not even convinced it had any convictions in the first instance. I was not just disappointed. I was crushed.
The film, as directed by Judd Apatow (there’s our first clue, right there), starts promisingly, with a flashback to Amy’s childhood — Amy plays a character called ‘Amy’ — and her philandering father (Colin Quinn), who employs the kids’ dolls to give a lecture on relationships; a lecture that ends with them all reciting the mantra ‘Monogamy is not realistic.’ It’s pretty good. Then we fast-forward 23 years to the Amy of today, who appears to have absorbed her father’s values, and is hard-drinking, hard-swearing and even hard-sexing, I suppose, as her love life amounts to a series of one-night stands. This is her choice, we are meant to believe, and she does not apologise for behaving, well, like a man. But — and this is a massive ‘but’; imagine it in skywriting — the tone is definitely not one of a sister doing it for herself.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in