Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck is no trainwreck

Universal Pictures

Amy Schumer is having her moment. After gaining momentum with two seasons of her Comedy Central sketch show Inside Amy Schumer, she hosted the MTV Movie Awards and won over a whole new group of fans who tuned into the third season of her show (and binged on the previous two seasons), priming themselves for her first starring role in a big screen comedy.

Trainwreck tells the story of Amy (all of her characters seem to share the name), a commitment-phobic young woman living a wild and carefree life as a single in New York. She writes for a men’s magazine, S’Nuff, that features articles like “Are You Gay or is Your Girlfriend Just Boring?”, has a revolving door of one-night stands (trying to never purposely spend the night), and she also has a “steady” boyfriend — at least in his mind — who bugs out on her when he discovers she’s not as monogamous as he is (she tries to sell the relationship to him with the option of sleeping with other women if he wants). But a writing assigment featuring a down-to-earth sports doctor, Aaron (Bill Hader), starts with an awkward one-nighter that brings up the ickiest of feelings for Amy … genuine love. But for someone who was taught at a young age that monogamy was a joke, how will Amy deal with these new feelings?

We’ve had one over-the-top laugh-out-loud comedy this summer with Melissa McCarthy’s Spy, so it’s a real treat to have a second that delivers hard on the laughs but keeps the situation more grounded in reality. Schumer’s screenplay lays on the laughs, and manages to interject the drama courtesy of her ailing father (Colin Quinn) and distant sister (Brie Larson), while delving deep into what Amy is running from without getting too sappy. There is the requisite third act drama (death, breakup, family at odds, soul searching) that could completely derail the film, but the final scene has one of the best comedy payoffs ever. Even the obligatory over-long Judd Apatow production doesn’t actually feel as long as it is, and that’s a real compliment.

Schumer does a great job at playing a version of herself, and if you’ve seen her show, you’ve probably seen many facets of this character portrayed in many of the sketches. But she also manages to sell the character Amy’s lonliness and sorrow, giving her a little more depth and dimension than you’d expect. The question is, how long can Schumer keep playing this character before she falls into the same rut Melissa McCarthy had fallen in to prior to Spy?

Schumer gets terrific support from Bill Hader, who even himself never thought he’d be a romantic lead in a film, but his everyman demeanor makes him the perfect choice for the role. Also great are Larson, Quinn, Dave Attell and Tilda Swinton, whom I didn’t even recognize, as Amy’s ice queen editor. The film is also peppered with many familiar faces (it’s good to have Judd Apatow on your side, apparently) including Randall Park, Ezra Miller (soon to be the big screen The Flash), Mike Birbiglia, Method Man, Matthew Broderick, Marv Albert, Chris Evert, Amar’e Stoudemire, Tim Meadows and SNL cast members Vanessa Bayer, Pete Davidson and Leslie Jones. Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei also show up as actors in a pretentious, artsy movie-within-the-movie about dog walker.

But some supporting actors deserve very special mention. First, Norman Lloyd appears as a resident at the nursing home where Amy’s dad is living. You may not know the name, but Lloyd has been around practically forever (his most famous role was on the TV series St. Elsewhere from 1982 to 1988) and, get this, celebrated his 100th birthday while making this movie! He’s as feisty as ever and he even has another movie in the can. You go, Norman freaking Lloyd!

Two sports stars also turn in terrific performances. LeBron James is a natural at playing a penny-pinching, Downton Abbey watching version of himself, with skilled comedian Hader actually acting has his straight man. Athletes aren’t generally the most natural of actors, but James is a joy every time he’s on screen. And really hitting for the fences and going for the laughs is John Cena, wrestler and action-movie star. Cena, who is only briefly in the first part of the film as Amy’s “steady” boyfriend, delivers some of the funniest, bizarre lines of the entire movie. From his attempts to talk dirty to Amy during sex to his verbal sparring with a patron of a movie theater, Cena apparently ad-libbed some of the funniest stuff that made it into the movie. And the guy deserves credit for (1) coming up with lines that makes his character vaguely gay and (2) appearing fully in the buff with only a dangling towel for coverage. That alone should sell some tickets.

If you’re in the mood for a raunchy comedy about pitfalls and benefits of relationships, then this is one Trainwreck you won’t want to pull your eyes away from.