Trainwreck (4/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 120 minutes.

Not for children.

With a title that aptly describes the movie, Judd Apatow is back and Amy Schumer’s got him. And a compatible couple they are because both seem burdened by terminal coprolalia (an uncontrollable or obsessive use of obscene language). Even if Amy can’t out F-bomb Judd, she can keep up with him. And she will engage any scene imaginable so long as it relates to sex.

Like “Bridesmaids” (2011), this is a film made mainly for women showing that women can be coarse, too (just picture your mother talking and acting like this). It’s inundated with sex jokes and situations apparently from a woman’s POV (tampons, anyone?) many of which take all the romance out of the act of making love.

It’s also loaded with cameos (Chris Evert looks so old she should sue the makeup person) and has LeBron James as a main character. James actually gives a good performance but Apatow (the director from a script by Schumer) should have told him that the word “ask” has not been properly pronounced “aks” (metathesis) since Chaucer died, and given him another take on that scene.

The athletes who appear, like Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and New York Knicks power forward Amare Stoudemaire, give unexpectedly good performances, along with Bill Hader who plays Schumer’s love interest. Hader, who never drops an F-bomb, constantly looks like he wonders how he got caught in such an ill-mannered film. It’s only because of the fine performances by Hader, James, and the others in cameos that the movie gets the higher rating. Without them it would struggle to get 1/10.

Even if it weren’t so loaded with bad language and so many unattractive sexual situations and jokes, it would still be far too long, which is a problem when the writer is also the star. Who could cut such wonderful lines and scenes? The answer to that is, someone with taste. I’m sick of this low class, low moral tone junk that Apatow constantly foists on the viewing public. This flunked the watched test in the first half hour, and the fact that I gave it that long was only due to my extraordinary patience.