Crazy Amy

I really enjoy Amy's TV show and was expecting big things from this movie but ended up feeling I'd wasted my time watching it and it's off delivery leave a bad taste in the mouth. Was it that Amy just wasn't up to a feature length film or was it Judd Apatow's direction that made this not work. Where Amy's mischievous bad taste gender stereotype flipping gags work on her show, here they were missing the knowing nod. Amy fitted her self centered character's skin too well and at feature length you started to believe this was a real person and someone you wouldn't want to spend time with, even in a movie. Schummer was too ugly, and I don't mean that in a physical sense. Hader was good, as were most of the actors, apart from the product placement sports stars. It really started to drag in the last 3rd, possibly because it had nowhere to go, which is exactly where it ended up.

This movie is like a lot of similar type of movies; meaning movies that aims to challenge preconceived notions of "what a lady should and should't be like". It quickly becomes banal, predictable and irritating. There's no depth of character here, because you sort of get the gist of the jokes before they're halfway delivered. Having said that; these kinds of movies can and have been saved by good performances. Unfortunately Amy Schumer doesn't deliver that. I don't know why scriptwriters and directors hit the same creative pitfalls every time a movie like this is to be made. We get it: here's an urban girl with a modern outlook on life who does what she wants, sleeps with whom she wants and doesn't apologize for it, etc etc.. good, but then what? A movie needs more than just a cliché of a character, predictable jokes and bad acting.

All the critics seem to be male, which I find interesting.

Here's a female point of view.

Maybe not all females have been in the protagonist's shoes, but it is very common for women to have problems with monogamy, just like men. Showing a woman who treats men the way most men treat women is not only realistic, but eye-opening. I think that's the problem most men have with the movie. No one wants to see the shoe on the other foot--it's uncomfortable, but guess what? It's reality.

I thought the movie was funny and touching. LeBron James is hilarious as himself.

For whoever says there is no real strong story-line? They obviously missed it. It's about maturing, about figuring out what a person's priorities are in life. It's about the realization that compensation isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Trainwreck is a romantic comedy directed by Judd Apatow and starring Amy Schumer and Bill Hader, and this film comes in very strong with the comedy. The romance side of the film kicks in about 30 minutes in, so for the first act of the film it really has some pretty damn good laughs. There was a pretty steady flow of jokes and comedy gags throughout the film and you have to give most of that credit to Amy Schumer who was incredibly hilarious in this. She is one of the funniest people out there today and she proves it in this film with perfect comedic timing. Her style of comedy is so blunt and fairly subtle at some moments and that makes it very unpredictable so she can hit you with great jokes left right and centre and you never see it coming.

Now even though she does manage to pull it off the best, Bill Hader and the supporting cast are also hilarious and provided a lot more laughs than i had initially expected. Bill Hader of course is hilarious and he works in this film really well but he was slightly overshadowed by Amy at some moments in the film, and the large supporting cast also took away from him a little. But man were the supporting cast hilarious, i have to give credit to LeBron James because that guy is hilarious. He was one of the biggest surprises of the film, almost every scene he was in i couldn't stop laughing, it looks like Apatow and Schumer managed to teach him a few things in terms of comedy.

As well as being jam packed with great hilarious moments this movie really had a basic but also pretty good rom-com story thrown in there. And it worked well, they didn't just force any random plot in there to add to the run-time. For the first two acts they did a great job at blending those comedic scenes and romantic more plot driven scenes well so they could switch between the two vary naturally. But the third act for me didn't work as much. The romantic side began to take charge and the comedy took a back seat. There were still some pretty funny scenes in the third act but it felt uneven tonally and a little jumpy. There was a pretty sad moment at one point then it tries to crack a few jokes immediately after then going back to the romantic stuff and it didn;t work for me as well as the rest of the film. I don't think it was an issue of being too long just needed a little more refining towards the end. But otherwise it was a great funny movie.

Amy Schumer's comedy may not be for everyone so those who are not a fan of her 'Inside Amy Schumer' skits probably won't like this as much but as far as a romantic comedy goes, this one was actually very good and had quite a bit in there for everyone. - 7.1

ALSO, on last thing, i just checked the list of cast and was surprised beyond belief when i found out that Tilda bloody Swinton was in this film. Like WTF? she was completely unrecognisable and hilarious, so see if you can pick her out when you see the film.

There are some makers who although talented in a specific way, move into a space that simply shows their talent to be little. Alexander Payne for example could be making stylized comedies with no problem, but as soon as he moves into elegy and meaning, it all becomes a sophomoric play. We've known Malick in that field and Payne is like a film school grad next to him.

So it would seem Apatow has an effervescent personality, at least enough to want to move out from his comfort zone. He could be cranking penis joke comedies till the cows come home but wants to move into more somber reflection about the pains of life. He has tried this a few times by now.

Here he tries a few switches. A movie about the usual slob who never grew out of adolescence but she's a girl. Men are almost entirely immature or idiots, and for some reason I can't begin to fathom, half of them gay, that is except for the knight in white armor who patiently helps her grow out of herself. He puts them in that New York movie romance where a couple are on and off again and might even think he's turning Woody Allen upside down. Indicative; the familiar romantic scene on a bench looking over at Brooklyn Bridge ends with a blowjob.

None of it sticks after a point and it's off-putting to think he might be thinking of any of this as transgressive. So he has moved out from the familiar safety of what he can do well, into a space that shows him to have trivial insights and odd hangups, from primarily a comedy about life where laughter sanctifies reductions, to primarily a drama about life where muttering dialogue and stereotypes rattle in the nothingness of not having anything to impart. He moves, even if ever so slightly, into territory that Woody, Bergman, and Altman have occupied. But in this space he's shown to be a dunderhead.