Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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20 UCW AUGUST 26 - SEPTEMBER 1, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM I started hearing buzz about Trainwreck (125 minutes) last spring, but I wasn't excited about Amy Schumer's first move role; I was excited to see the new Judd Apatow movie. I have steered clear of Amy Schumer because I never heard of her before she appeared on Last Comic Standing. Boy was I wrong! When I planned to go see the film, I decided to watch a few episodes of Inside Amy Schumer, and once I got started, I couldn't stop. I had no idea what I was missing, and Trainwreck certainly lived up to the prom- ise of those short sketches. This is the first film directed by Apatow that he didn't write him- self, and his ability to guide a quirky "anti-rom-com" is well matched with Schumer's ability to target sexism where it lives — defying the expectation that women must conform to a very specific and limited set of race/ gen- der/ appearance/ behavior ideals in order to be accepted. The film opens with Gordon Townsend (Colin Quinn) telling his daugh- ters that "monogamy isn't realistic." Fast forward twenty years or so later to land on Amy (Schumer) living her life according to that advice. She is dating a male stereotype (John Cena) played for great laughs while getting some strange on the side. She drinks, swears, sleeps around — if she had an Iron Man suit, she could play Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War. It's utterly beautiful. She works at a men's magazine for a woman named Dianna (Tilda Swinton) and is assigned an article on a sports doctor named Aaron (Bill Hader). He seems to take her inability to relate to men as real living breathing humans in stride while serving as a great "straight man" to her comedic excesses. The relationship is believable, though the insistence on including basketball players like LeBron James and Amar'e Stoudemire as background players to the story didn't work for me. They weren't ter- rible actors, but the inclusion seemed like a series of inside jokes designed to exclude viewers who don't follow sports. Like for example, me, as my sports knowledge can be readily summed up as "Do the Thing! Score the Point!" There is a slow moving subplot with Amy's sister Kim (Brie Larson), her husband Tom (Mike Birbiglia) and her stepson (Evan Brinkman). The hus- band and stepson are there primarily for Amy to use as cannon fodder, and something about the family dynamic wasn't completely believable. Other than that, the film features the kind of female lead that isn't often shown. It was well-done, relevant, relatable, and I want to see it again. Overall, I loved it. I expected to laugh. I didn't expect to cry; but, the scenes between Amy and her father may or may not have caused me to think sarcastic thoughts to avoid crying. Since this story is based on Amy Schumer's real life experiences, I found myself wondering how many of the emotional touchstones in the movie (the relationship between Amy and her father; the alcoholism) were taken straight from events that she lived through and how many were adjusted to provide a more film-friendly narrative. Now playing at Patriot 14 + IMAX You're Going to Cry Trainwreck (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200. Reservations Required. Call 910-678-8899 for Tickets www.faydta.org www.ncdcr.gov/ncmcf Also visit Sept 11-13: www.stsch.nc.goarch.org City Center Gallery & Books • Museum of the Cape Fear Up & Coming Weekly • Village Green Related Companies