[3]

Amy Schumer is an interesting, original, funny person in all her YouTube videos, so when I heard she had written Trainwreck and was starring in it, I was intrigued. Unfortunately, there are only two good scenes in the movie — one is the opening scene, in which Colin Quinn tells his young daughters why he and mommy are getting a divorce, using an analogy only little girls might understand. The other is an early sex scene between Schumer and WWE superstar John Cena. Cena gives a good, solid performance in the film, which matches his good, solid body, which at one point sports nothing but a hand towel over his hard-on, surely the film’s finest moment. Other than these two scenes, I also enjoyed the supporting performances by Tilda Swinton and  LeBron James.

But that’s it. Because Trainwreck is no comedy. It’s about loneliness, sadness, depression, death (there’s a funeral), suspicion, betrayal, hurt feelings, coercion, sublimation, and the dull, constant pain of inevitable conformity. In other words, it’s like every other fucking romantic comedy ever made since the 1940s. Half-way through the movie, what little fun and games we’ve had come abruptly to the end, and then we have to endure another full hour of people being sad, crying, breaking up, bleeding, getting fired, crying more about being broken up, and then in that predictable fashion that makes me want to blow my brains out every time it happens, getting back together and pretending to have a happy ending.

With Amy Schumer as the vehicle for this trite bullshit, the experience is even more excruciating — because she’s better than this. It’s not her message, it’s not her personality. It’s just terrible watching her go through the motions of genre convention.

And shame on Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, This Is 40, Funny People) for making yet another mostly unfunny movie that is 30 minutes too long.

With Bill Hader, Ezra Miller, Normal Lloyd, Daniel Radcliffe, Marisa Tomei, Marv Albert, Matthew Broderick, and other peculiar celebrity cameos thrown in to desperately distract you from how pedestrian the movie is.

So let’s recap: Movie bad… naked Cena good.