Movie Review: Trainwreck

Trainwreck
Directed by: Judd Apatow.
Written by: Amy Schumer.
Starring: Amy Schumer (Amy), Bill Hader (Aaron), LeBron James (LeBron James), Colin Quinn (Gordon), Brie Larson (Kim), Tilda Swinton (Dianna), John Cena (Steven), Vanessa Bayer (Nikki), Dave Attell (Noam), Randall Park (Bryson),  Jon Glaser (Schultz),  Ezra Miller (Donald), Evan Brinkman (Allister), Mike Birbiglia (Tom), Norman Lloyd (Norman), Method Man (Temembe), Amar'e Stoudemire (Amar'e Stoudemire).

Judd Apatow is a smart man. His last two films – Funny People and This is 40 – were both box office and critical disappointments. This alongside the fact that his two previous films – The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up were both successes, and his good friend Paul Feig’s successes alongside Melissa McCarthy, made it look like perhaps Apatow’s moment had passed. But, as mentioned, Apatow is smart – and knows talented people, and so was smart enough to hitch his wagon to Amy Schumer. Schumer’s TV show, Inside Amy Schumer, is often daring and boundary pushing in its depiction of feminist issues on TV and in comedy (and even more frequently, hilarious). The two of them working together on Trainwreck – which Apatow directs, and Schumer wrote and stars in, works quite well – even if it does seem like Schumer has been forced, a little bit anyway, to fit her comic persona inside an Apatow shaped box. Trainwreck has a lot in common with The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up – except the genders have been reversed, so that it’s Schumer playing the irresponsible one who needs to grow up, and her love interest – Bill Hader – who has to be the one who helps her get there. Trainwreck is not revolutionary, like Schumer’s TV show, but what it is one of the funniest mainstream comedies of the year, so who really cares. It gives Schumer a fine entrance into the movies – where stardom looms – and gives Apatow a chance to get back on top. The two work well together.

In the film, Schumer plays a thinly veiled version of her own comic persona – also named Amy. But this Amy isn’t a stand-up comic and TV star, but like every other romantic comedy heroine, works at a New York based magazine. This one is called S’Nuff, and it’s a seemingly offensive, sexist and misogynistic “Men’s magazine”. Amy is up for a big promotion – and she has to nail her next story, a profile of a sports doctor, Aaron (Bill Hader), who works with all the big name athletes you could think of. But she hates sports. And Aaron is her seeming complete opposite. When we meet her, Amy is in a sort of relationship with Steven (Jon Cena), but also goes out and has a series of one-night stands – often waking up hung-over, after a night of hard drinking not sure exactly where she is. Aaron is more of a homebody – a little reserved and kind of awkward around women. Or, at least, I think that’s how I think he’s supposed to be, although as played by Hader, he’s doesn’t really come off that way. Anyway, of course these two are going to fall for each other – despite it being completely unprofessional, and no one will much care about that.

As with every Apatow movie, there are also several subplots that while enjoyable in their own right, may have been better off being cut. There’s Amy’s father (Colin Quinn) – one of those outspoken old bigots in the Archie Bunker traditional, who has MS and has had to go into assisted living, despite being very young to be there. There’s her sister Kim (Brie Larson) – who went in the opposite direction of Amy, married young, become a stepmother, and is now on her way to be a mother herself. There is Aaron hanging out with one of his clients – LeBron James – who spends an awful lot of time in New York for someone who works in Cleveland. There is a series of workplace scenes with Amy’s cruelly dismissive boss – Tilda Swinton – and her co-workers who all walk on eggshells around her. Some of these subplots work, some don’t – but all of them are elevated by having terrific actors in roles that sometimes border on the underwritten. Again, as with many Apatow movies there are also several scenes that probably seemed funny by themselves that simply drag the whole movie to a dead stop and don’t work in the movie as a whole (none more apparent than a “romantic intervention” staged by an odd collection of celebrities who are supposedly Aaron’s friends, that is not only unfunny, but painfully so).

Yet, whenever the movie threatens to head off the rails, Schumer herself is the one who more often than not brings it back. Schumer is thoroughly charming, funny and likable throughout the film. Like some other Apatow protagonists, she does some things that risk losing audience sympathy – but she’s so likable, and vulnerable, that she never does. Schumer doesn’t quite push as hard against stereotypes in the film as she does on her TV show – mainly playing it safe, as far as R rated romantic comedies go anyway. That’s actually kind of smart, as it allows her to establish herself as a legitimate movie star in this movie – and it works. If the film were just a comedy, it would still be worthwhile, as it’s smarter and funnier than most R-rated comedies to come out of Hollywood. But the film is also legitimately heartfelt – and may well have you tearing up once or twice. That balance takes skill, and although at times it’s not quite right, for the most part Trainwreck nails it.

In short, Trainwreck works – it walks that fine line between a Schumer comedy and an Apatow comedy. Schumer probably does have a more daring comic movie inside her somewhere, one that doesn’t quite cohere to Apatow’s style of humor – which while it can be gross out, is actually fairly conservative underneath all the sex. Schumer may be the person to burst past that at some point. For now though, Trainwreck will more than suffice.

Movie Review: This is 40

This is 40
Directed by: Judd Apatow.
Written by: Judd Apatow.
Starring: Paul Rudd (Pete), Leslie Mann (Debbie), Maude Apatow (Sadie), Iris Apatow (Charlotte), Jason Segel (Jason), Annie Mumolo (Barb), Robert Smigel (Barry), Megan Fox (Desi), Charlyne Yi (Jodi), Graham Parker (Himself), Chris O'Dowd (Ronnie), Lena Dunham (Cat), Albert Brooks (Larry), John Lithgow (Oliver), Melissa McCarthy (Catherine).

The biggest problem with Judd Apatow films is that he doesn’t know when enough is enough. With The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up he made two of the best comedies in recent years – and even his third film, Funny People, has a lot of great stuff in it. His latest, This is 40, is very much the same. Somewhere lurking in the movie’s nearly two and half hour runtime is a great comedy about what it means to be in a long term marriage with kids. But like all of Apatow’s films, he doesn’t seem to know that sometimes less is more. He wants to include pretty much every idea he has in his head in the final film. The result is a movie that feels bloated, and although so much of the movie is good – either insightful or funny or both – the overall impact is dulled simply because Apatow’s story cannot support the films mammoth running time. It reminds me of the story of the editing of Annie Hall – when the editor convinced Woody Allen to cut out an entire subplot that would have added an hour of running time, and instead to concentrate solely on the relationship between Alvie and Annie. The result is one of the greatest screen comedies ever made. Apatow needs an editor like that.

The film reintroduces Pete and Debbie (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann), the couple who provided the example (either of what to do, or what not to do, depending on how you look at it) to the main characters in Knocked Up. They are both turning 40 within a week of each other, but Debbie insists she’s really only 38 – but she’s not fooling anyone. He owns his own indie record label, and its struggling, and she owns her own fashion boutique, and it isn’t doing well either. Not only are they facing financial difficulties, their relationship has reached a state of complacency. With two daughters, demanding jobs, and demanding extended families (two of the many subplots involved their fathers – Albert Brooks as his, who constantly needs money, and John Lithgow as hers, who is never around), they are taking each other for granted. And things get even worse during the course of the movie.

This is 40 is one of the few movies out there that take an honest look at what it is like to be married to the same person for years on end. The love between the two of you never really goes away, but that passion that most movies are about fades after years together. As much as you love the other person, sometimes they can drive you absolutely crazy. The movie is at its best when it concentrates on Rudd and Mann together – the bickering, the arguing, the lying, the frustration. But it’s not all bad. They still love each other; they’re just not sure what to do next. But when push comes to shove, they are still there for each other. You can insult them as much as you like – but no one else can.

The movie is bloated because there are too many subplots. Albert Brooks constant demand for money. John Lithgow’s absentee dad. Pete’s attempt to resurrect the career of Graham Parker. His problems at work with is staff (including Chris O’Dowd). The two clerks at Debbie’s store – Charlene Yi and Megan Fox. Debbie’s trainer (Jason Segel). A feud with another mother at school (Melissa McCarthy). Pete’s bitch sessions with his best friend (Robert Smigel). And then all the problems with the kids themselves (Maude and Iris Apatow). The fact that so many of these performances – especially by Brooks, Lithgow and McCarthy – are great helps all the subplots go down easier than they should. Yet, there is still way too much going on for one movie to deal with. The movie would have been much better off jettisoning several of these subplots, and concentrating on what works best – Pete and Debbie themselves.

Paul Rudd is a fine comic actor, and while the movie demands more dramatic work from him than we’re used to seeing, it’s mostly good in those scenes as well (although he does resort to talking really loud too often). Leslie Mann is wonderful though as Debbie – sympathetic, funny, sexy, but also kind of annoying in the way that only wives can be. She nails it.

Overall, This is 40 is a good film. It is way too bloated, and at times the editing seems choppy – as if Apatow is more concerned with jamming everything he wants into the movie than how it all flows together. And yet, what works in the movie is wonderful, honest and funny. This is 40 could have been a great film – but I’ll settle for the good one Apatow made.

Movie Review: Funny People

Funny People *** ½
Directed by: Judd Apatow.
Written By: Judd Apatow.
Starring: Adam Sandler (George Simmons), Seth Rogen (Ira Wright), Leslie Mann (Laura), Eric Bana (Clarke), Jonah Hill (Leo Koenig), Jason Schwartzman (Mark Taylor Jackson), Aubrey Plaza (Daisy), Maude Apatow (Mable), Iris Apatow (Ingrid), RZA (Chuck), Torsten Voges (Dr. Lars).

Many comedians are very sad, empty people. They laugh to keep themselves from crying - or killing themselves. Hollywood has a long history of disturbed funny men - Fatty Arbuckle, John Belusi and Chris Farley to name but a few that ended tragically - but many of them have lead troubled lives. Judd Apatow’s Funny People is a movie that addresses this issue head on. George Simmons (Adam Sandler) is a famous comic actor and stand up comedian, who lonely, and has been ever since he blew it with the girl of his dreams, Laura (Leslie Mann), a decade before. He fills the void with meaningless sex with random girls who want to sleep with a famous person. When he is diagnosed with a rare, and usually fatal, form of cancer, he discovers that he has no one to turn to for support. Abandoning his movie career, he decides to go back to doing stand up for a while. But he is too depressed to write anything funny. While at a club one night he sees Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) perform, and likes him. Ira is struggling to make ends meet. He lives on the couch of his friends Mark (Jason Schwartzman), who is the star of a terrible sitcom called “Yo, Teach!” and Leo (Jonah Hill), who also does stand up but is getting more notice than Ira. Ira still has to work part time at a deli. George decides to hire Ira - to write jokes for him, and become his personal assistant. Ira is the only person that George tells about his illness.

If you’ve made it this far into the review, you’ve probably figured out that Funny People is not quite the typical Hollywood comedy. Like the first two films in his career, The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, Funny People mixes in a dose to drama with the comedy. And Funny People is in fact very funny. I laughed throughout the movie. Sandler, Rogen, Mann, Hill and Schwartzman are all wonderful comedic actors, who are capable of delivering one liners with the best of them, as well doing more character based comedy. When you add a supporting cast including Eric Bana, showing off some unexpected comedic flair and newcomer Aubrey Plaza, who is hilarious in a deadpan way, and you’ve got a huge cast capable of making you laugh at will.

But aside from the comedy - which is crude and hilarious (seriously, I believe I heard the word cock more in this movie than in any other film I have ever seen) - I do think that Funny People is perhaps Apatow’s most mature film. Unlike the other two films - where essentially the love of a good woman was enough to save two seemingly hopeless cases of arrested development - Funny People realizes that sometimes that is not enough. One of the most daring choices in the movie is to make Simmons an asshole. What’s more, he stays an asshole for the entire running time of the movie. Sandler makes him likable, because we like Sandler, but Simmons really is not that nice of a person. It is a wonderful performance by Sandler, who does not try to soften him at all and also because Sandler is not afraid of poking fun at himself. The movies that Simmons has made up to the point of his career he finds himself in, all resemble the earlier films of Sandler, and are mocked mercilessly. But Sandler, as he showed in Punch-Drunk Love and Reign Over Me, is not afraid to deconstruct his own image. And in Funny People he does so mercilessly. In real life Sandler seems to me a fairly together person - happily married with kids who stays out of the tabloids - but Sandler has undoubtedly seen people like Simmons before (some even appear in cameos in this movie) and he nails the character.

Seth Rogen has the other major role in the film, and he too is pitch perfect. It was not that long ago that Rogen was a struggling comedian, so I think that he identifies with Ira, and he certainly gives a wonderful performance. Rogen has grown as an actor over the past few years, maturing into a complete actor - not just someone who can deliver one liners. Leslie Mann, as she did in both of Apatow’s other films, delivers a realistic performance as a woman who is at a crossroads of her life. Her marriage is not great, but things with George were hardly perfect in the past, so they probably won’t be in the future.

But although I do think that Funny People is Apatow’s most mature film, I do not think it is his best. Like his other two films, Funny People is at least 20 minutes too long, but this time it feels too long, which the other two did not. There is some sloppy storytelling, as the movie moves from one section to another too quickly. The film does not always flow smoothly. At points, you do not always believe that the characters would do what they do in the film.

But these are minor complaints to what really is one of the most enjoyable films of the year. Apatow is one of the most original voices in comedy right now. He has had a lot of imitators in the past few years, but no one does it better than he does. I cannot wait to see what he does next.

Judd Apatow and the Romantic Comedy for Guys

Judd Apatow’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the credits of the new movie, I Love You, Man, but it might as well have. Even though he didn’t have anything to do with making the movie, it does star two of his frequent collaborators – Paul Rudd and Jason Segel – and the comic sensibility of the film is very much the same as the films Apatow has directed and produced in the last few years.

The films he has been involved with – in particular The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express and Forgetting Sarah Marshall – all share something in common with I Love You, Man, in that they are all in their own ways, romantic comedies directed at the male audience, instead of typical female audience. With the exception of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the most important relationships in all the films are not between the “boy” and the “girl” in the movie, but rather are all about male camaraderie. And they fulfill the function for men, what most romantic comedies do for women – wish fulfillment. The typical romantic comedy goes something like this: A career centric woman with no time for men, meets a rich, handsome rebel type – who is really quite sensitive underneath his rough exterior, and at the start hates them, then falls madly in love with them, then encounters some sort of temporarily road block, only to get back together in the final scene because of a grand romantic gesture, and as the end credits role, we either see the two lovers kissing happily, or at the altar getting married. This is essentially the plot of EVERY romantic comedy every made, and women still lap it up. Why? Because it provides mindless escapism and fulfills their hopes and dreams. What woman doesn’t want to be swept off their feet by a George Clooney, Matthew McConaghey or John Cusack type? Women are smart enough to know that these romantic comedies are as much fantasy as The Lord of the Rings, but when you’re single, or in a relationship with someone who looks more like Seth Rogen then Patrick Dempsey, it’s nice to fantasize about romance once in a while, isn’t it ladies?

What the Apatow movies do is switch the focus from the ladies to the men, and instead of indulging women’s fantasies, they indulge men’s. I have always felt that in most romantic comedies, the men are WAY too idealized to be truly believable. They all have such chiseled good looks, are tremendously wealthy, have glamorous jobs, loads of free time, are somehow both a rebel and sensitive, and of course, are amazing in bed. I mean, how is a real guy ever going to compare to the guys in most romantic comedies? The short answer, they’re not.

The Apatow movies basically take this dynamic and flip it. Instead of Matthew McConaghey, we get Seth Rogen. Instead of George Clooney, we get Jason Segel. Most guys look more like the second guys in those comparisons then the first, don’t they? And the women they somehow still manage to get are all gorgeous, smart, sexy and fun. Elizabeth Banks, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Katherine Heigel, Martha MacIssac, Emma Stone. Each one of them are better looking than their male counterparts in the movie. Not only that, they are also infinitely kind and patient with the overgrown man child at the center of the movie. Why would Katherine Heigel’s character in Knocked Up, want Seth Rogen? She is a gorgeous, sexy successful TV personality; he’s an overweight, unemployed guy trying to get a porn site operational. How does Jason Segel end up having both Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell fighting over him by the end of Forgetting Sarah Marshall?

To the credit of the movies – and the reason why they work as well as they do- they do look seriously at the man children at the core of their stories, and eventually conclude that what they really need to do to get these women is grow the hell up. Steve Carell’s friends in The 40 Year Old Virgin are much like he is – in that their development was arrested sometime in high school. While Carell has never grown out of that stage that most guys go through of being nervous talking to girls and never saying the right thing, they have never gotten over the idea that what you should try to do is bang every hot chick that you can. Paul Rudd’s character clings pathetically to a past relationship that he has overinflated in his own mind into the great love of his life. This isn’t what adults do, it’s what teenagers do. In Knocked Up, Seth Rogen realizes that in order to become a responsible adult, he actually needs to get off his ass and do something. Kristen Bell has a great scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall that changes the way we see her character, when she lectures Jason Segel on just what being with him was like. It is a fairly harsh scene, but one he needs to hear if he’s ever going to grow up and have a real relationship. In a way, the two most mature characters in the Apatow movies are the teenagers in Superbad (Michael Cera and Jonah Hill), not because they really are actually more mature then their older counterparts, but in that they learn they have to grow up a good decade earlier than the characters in the other movies do. At least they have an excuse for acting like teenagers – they are teenagers.

The basic flaw in each of these films – what keeps them from being truly great instead of just near great – is that the women are never as complex as the men are. Few films understand men as well as these ones do, but the women in the movies are too highly idealized. They are gorgeous, sexy, funny, smart, patient and willing to forgive the men in the movie for pretty much every mistake they make. I mean, really, why would Katherine Heigel want Seth Rogen in Knocked Up? What is it about Jason Segel that Mila Kunis finds so irresistible in Forgetting Sarah Marshall? In short, the movies provide the same sort of unrealistic ideal for women as most romantic comedies do of men.


I do hope that sooner or later, one of these movies will get the male-female dynamic as right as all of these films get the male-male dynamic. Because a romantic comedy that saw both men and women as clearly as these movies see their male characters would be a revelation. I would even settle for a movie by a female writer-director that looked at the other side more clearly then these films, or for that matter the more generic romantic comedies. I imagine Forgetting Sarah Marshall told from her point of view, and wonder what that film would be like. For now, though, I’ll settle for more films as good as these ones. Yes, I know they are flawed, and that they are essentially male wish fulfillment. But then again, I am a male, and I don’t mind seeing my wishes fulfilled sometimes.