The reason why “Trainwreck” is ultimately disappointing is less because of what the movie is and more because of what it could, or should, have been. Written by and starring comedian Amy Schumer and directed by funny-film juggernaut Judd Apatow, the movie carries a feeling of conflicting sensibilities at every moment. On screen we’re presented with a woman who is celebrated for being excessive and free, antagonistic toward the traditional modes of family-making. Yet this persona collides with another idea spelled out in the film: that this excessiveness is just a phase, a pothole in the road to love, marriage, and family — and this is what we all really aspire to. Schumer plays Amy, a staff writer at a men’s magazine who is a proud partier. When the film opens, she talks about her great job, her great apartment, and the stable of men she has slept with recently, each more attractive than the next. She is dating a muscle-bound emotional wreck named Steven (played by professional wrestler John Cena), although she is more engaged with laughing at his violent mood swings than any kind of commitment. Amy is more attached to her ageing father (Colin Quinn), who has been placed in a nursing home and who, at the opening of the film, we see dispel the myths of monogamy to his daughters in a flashback. She looks at her married sister (Brie Larson) as the antithesis of what she wants, and is openly mocking toward her husband and stepchild. They represent what women are supposed to want with their lives. Amy is content with doing what she wants.At work, she is struggling to move beyond puff pieces and advice columns, and at a pitch meeting her chaotic boss (Tilda Swinton) gives her an assignment to write a profile on a sports doctor named Aaron Conners (Bill Hader). The problem is that Amy knows nothing about sports and thinks they are dumb. But she takes on the story anyway, hoping it lands her the open executive editor position at the magazine.After an awkward encounter with Conners, the two begin to develop a relationship while she follows him around for the story. Soon enough, Amy begins to struggle with her feelings, and what this means for her freedom. You can pretty much guess what happens from here.This is typical stuff for Apatow, whose work has always been infected with a goofy conservatism in the guise of coming-of-age. (Think of Seth Rogan in “Knocked Up,” the man-child who must mature to take care of his real child, or Adam Sandler’s character in “Funny People,” who pines for the comforts of family-life that have escaped him.) But Schumer’s comedic point-of-view is already defined, and she is extremely skilled in pushing back against the narratives that wind themselves through Apatow’s work and so many others. Amy isn’t a stoner who sits around all day doing nothing; she is a professional woman who seems to be doing fine, a model of many forms of success. She doesn’t need saving or changing. Taking her progressive point-of-view and placing it within this context feels like squeezing a round peg into a square hole.But is Schumer’s point-of-view really that progressive? She has been criticized as of late for her “dumb jokes involving race,” and “Trainwreck” isn’t going to bat away her detractors. If anything, it will give them the lighter to ignite another flame: in Amy’s first interaction with her future doctor boyfriend, there is a lame back and forth between the two about Amy having no black friends, while in another scene Amy’s juice-head date harasses a black couple sitting behind them by referring to one of them as the rapper Tone-Lōc. Oh yeah, and there is the random black lady (played by “Saturday Night Live” cast member Leslie Jones) on the subway who begins screaming for no reason, other than a screaming black person is apparently funny.These types of lazy jokes are hard to watch, especially in a film that got one of its biggest laughs from a surprising and smart gag about Woody Allen that was biting and provocative and knocks the wind out of the filmmaker’s neurotic-mythic New York screen-romances. Schumer is a big deal now, and “Trainwreck” has the potential to draw in huge crowds. People want to hear what she has to say, and are invigorated by the way she says it. But what she says in this film is consumed by the structures of commerciality. In an attempt to make something that was broad and appealing to everyone, Apatow and company, including Schumer herself, stripped the actor of her specificity and her own voice.
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