‘Trainwreck’ derailed by unlikable main character, boring 2nd half (Movie review)

“Trainwreck” (now available from Redbox) is a surprisingly boring theatrical debut from screenwriter and lead actor Amy Schumer, who has shown signs of genius in her half-hour sketch show “Inside Amy Schumer.” It has some nice comedic moments, particularly in the early going, but it becomes almost unwatchably boring about halfway through before recovering slightly with a big set piece. But it doesn’t remotely live up to the hype or to the standards of director Judd Apatow (who, notably, has no writing credit here).

The movie’s pitch is kind of obvious and kind of brilliant: “Trainwreck” fits the romantic comedy template like a glove, but the traditional gender roles are swapped: Amy (Schumer) is the troubled main character and Aaron (Bill Hader) is the perfect boyfriend who is willing to put up with her.

Amy is a high-functioning alcohol, drug and sex addict who writes for an “edgy” magazine in New York City. She claims she writes what her magazine editor (Tilda Swinton, with effective over-the-top snark) wants, but it wasn’t the job that shaped Amy: We can see her personality is founded upon viewing everyone else as disposable punchlines. This was ingrained with the movie-opening flashback of her dad (Colin Quinn) telling his daughters he’s divorcing their mom. But it’s a flimsy excuse, as the traumatic event doesn’t shape her younger sister.

As an adult, talking with her now-married sister, Kim (Brie Larson), Amy makes fun of her brother-in-law’s wardrobe and stops just short of making fun of her astronomy-loving nephew for being a nerd. That’s when she’s being casual; when she’s emotionally worked up, she doles out unfounded barbs such as accusing Kim of not caring about their ailing dad (by the way, Quinn is distractingly too young to be playing the role of someone in a nursing home). And the traditional rom-com “big misunderstanding” that kicks off the final act is predicated on Amy being randomly mean to Aaron.

When her first boyfriend of the film (wrestler John Cena, who shines in an extended joke about being shushed in a movie theater – “Mark Wahlberg? … I look like Mark Wahlberg ATE Mark Wahlberg!”) tells Amy he was going to ask her to marry him, she says she didn’t even realize he liked her. For a supposed magazine profile writer, Amy is at best oblivious, at worst dismissive of what makes other people tick. Certainly, she doesn’t care about other people.

That’s the first major flaw of the movie: Amy is not worth rooting for. Her unlikability is somewhat intentional, as she is of course the “Trainwreck” the title is referring to. But as an audience, we need a stronger hint that there’s a decent person buried underneath the façade. We do get hints that there’s a human being under there when she admits to Kim that she really likes Aaron – but even that is a self-centered emotion.

Ironically, while “Trainwreck” flips the gender roles of traditional romantic comedies, it doesn’t shed the problem of the woman being underdeveloped and the man being a full-fledged character. As doctor-to-the-sports-stars Aaron, Hader is instantly likable, and his friendship with LeBron James (playing himself and showing natural comedic chops) is adorable. While the overall film doesn’t coalesce, there are some spot-on scenes, including LeBron and Aaron chatting about women while playing one-on-one: LeBron is hilariously dominating, of course, but neither friend draws attention to that. I also liked the scene where LeBron tells Amy not to hurt his best friend, giving her a stare-down that implies vague but dire consequences if she does.

As “Trainwreck” goes forward, though, the handful of great scenes don’t coalesce into a great movie. The tone shifts all over the spectrum, which I suspect is a result of a script that was rushed into production, but it could also be the director’s fault, I suppose. It’s strange to think that someone with the track record of Apatow (who constructed pitch-perfect hours of “Freaks and Geeks” back in the day) could miss the mark so badly, although he does have some slight misfires on his resume, including “Funny People.”

Schumer, likewise, is responsible for some pitch-perfect works, but none are longer than a half-hour. The highlight is “12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer” – which takes up a whole episode of her show – wherein she deliciously pounds home the joke of a roomful of male jurors debating whether Schumer is hot enough to be a TV star. While the initial premise of a flipped-script rom-com is great, she can’t sustain the concept for the length of a movie. I think the script is the primary failure, but perhaps her performance falls short, too, as she doesn’t deliver much nuance.

Some SPOILERS follow.

The back half of “Trainwreck” is indeed a trainwreck, like a “Saturday Night Live” movie that is padded for a longer running time, except that this didn’t need to be such a mess. LeBron drops out of the film for no good reason and we instead pick up Aaron’s friendship with the Knicks’ Amar’e Stoudamire, who is much blander but also not given any great material.

The tone continues to shift wildly. As one last catalyst for getting her s**t together, a drunken Amy sexually assaults a 16-year-old intern from the magazine in a joke that utterly fails to connect. Seeing it in context is not as bad as hearing it spoken, as the intern is fair game for the encounter, but still, such an action would have frightening legal consequences in the real world, and that angle isn’t addressed at all. As it happens, she gets fired, and that inspires Amy to realize what’s important in her life, so “Trainwreck” concludes with the standard grand gesture: She joins the Knicks cheerleaders in a performance for Aaron in order to win him back. She’s humorously mediocre at the dance moves, giving “Trainwreck” one last laugh.

But despite being the main character, Amy makes the shift into someone who will deal with her mistakes and try to correct them off screen – so the moment that could possibly salvage the film isn’t shown to us. Earlier in the film, we were getting occasional voiceovers from Amy, and even a voiceover might’ve made up for this missing scene a bit – but that conceit is long forgotten by this point. By the end, it feels like Aaron has become the main character. That’s a matter of perspective, of course, as it’s the audience member’s choice who they want to relate to. But as likable as Hader’s Aaron is, “Trainwreck” never convinced me of why he would or should love Amy.