Trainwreck (Judd Apatow, 2015)

[domino harvey]

I didn't think this was very funny, but I would be interested in seeing Schumer again in another film, perhaps one with a leaner structure that doesn't devolve into endless bantery bits of improv that stop the film dead every four minutes (for an additional four minutes). Further evidence that my avoidance of Judd Apatow films is still a good call, more than anything. I think there's some decent ideas at play here, but Schumer's far more interested in the naughtiness aspects frontloaded into the film to take her turnaround in the end with much credulity, even those are just below the improv sections in terms of the comic bits offered up here. Ironically, for all it's alleged freshness, the film functions best when it turns into what it's taken its inspiration from, that long strand of romantic comedies from the late 90s/early 00s where a young career woman working in a magazine (it was always a magazine, wasn't it) learns a Valuable Lesson and initiates the Big Romantic Finale-- it's hoary, but it still works better than when the film's whorey (sorry) (well, not that sorry).