Train Wreck * * * *

I have always enjoyed the work of director Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up).  I have also come to expect some hard-edged humour in his films (fine by me). But despite his reputation, most of the publicity surrounding his latest film seems to be about the star and writer, Amy Schumer.
Sorry, but I’d never heard of her before this film was released. Such unfamiliarity could make my review more or less insightful than other reviews.  

Could do.

But I’m guessing it’ll just be the usual waffle.  

Amy Schumer has written and performed in many sketches on American TV and does stand up comedy - and is quite popular apparently. Wake me up.

All that aside, what I saw in Train Wreck was a very funny girl with great comedic acting. Quite a few actors and celebrities seem to like her too, and contribute to her first film, including Tilda Swinton. Also, Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei who star in a funny film within the film, about dog people.

Amy Schumer’s Train Wreck is no train wreck. It’s far too funny to ever be considered a failure. But, it's not the smoothest running train on the tracks either, and I wonder how it would shape up without the experience and competence of Judd Apatow.

In the film Amy Townsend works for a dreadful magazine called S’nuf. (Tilda Swinton is the thoroughly amoral editor).  Amy writes cynical articles by day and drinks most nights.  She has a boyfriend who is bulging with muscles and keeps making homosexual Freudian slips.  She sleeps around behind her boyfriend's back. But we learn she’s done that with every boyfriend before him.

Her father, whose life lesson to his daughters was to teach them to be uncommitted, is dying in a nursing home. Amy has a love/hate relationship with her sister Kim. Kim lives in the ‘burbs, has an unnervingly different son, and an unexciting, but decent, hubbie.

Amy is commissioned to write a story on sports medicine  - a subject in which she has no interest. Her research causes her to strike up a relationship with a sports doctor. As is her way, after a few drinks it's off to bed. But this time, rather than leaving after sex - which is what she usually does - she finds herself staying over.  She actually likes him, thus commencing the complicated changes she has to go through.
I guess there are two Amy’s to consider here. The character in the film, Amy Townsend, and the one who wrote and is playing the character - Amy Schumer. I can't help but wonder if Amy Schumer has invested Amy Townsend with allowances she herself enjoys.  Amy Schumer might be able to get away with a lot of hi-jinx because she is Amy Schumer - funny girl and celebrity. Taking it from magazine writer Amy Townsend might not be so easy - and as for wanting to be her boyfriend… who would?  

There is a sketch like feel to Amy Schumer's script with each scene having its own beginning middle and punch-line end, each sculptured so finely it almost stands separate to what went before it or what will come after it. Some scenes don’t contribute to the progress of the story at all, but they are so funny you don’t mind.

It's like listening to a speech that has so many funny lines you keep forgetting what the speech is about - and don’t really care.

It also has some of the best sex scenes I have seen in a film. Not because they are sexy, but because they are just so damn funny.

Yeah I’m slow, but I’m glad to have met Amy Schumer and can understand why the buzz surrounding this film is mostly about her. With Train Wreck she has written and performed in a film that is rude, dirty, shocking and vulgar but it has a heart. And most importantly it is uproariously funny.