The Funny-As-Hell “Trainwreck” Is Anything But

“We all know one.” So goes the tagline for Trainwreck, comic phenom Amy Schumer’s debut starring vehicle with Judd Apatow. With the third season of Inside Amy Schumer in full swing and the comedian’s name seemingly plastered across the headline daily (sometimes for better reasons than others), Trainwreck arrives looking more like a victory lap than a victory. Three seasons have given audiences plenty of time to get familiar with Schumer’s comic persona, though they hardly needed it. After all, we all know one: that friend who’s down for anything, maybe kinda irresponsible, but always a good time. And more than anything, funny as hell.

Indeed, Trainwreck is every bit as funny as anything in Apatow’s late-2000s run of supremacy in studio comedies, hanging tough with the likes of Superbad and The 40-Year Old Virgin. In fact, the film plays almost exactly like a gender-flipped version of Knocked Up, sans pregnancy, and this is where the trouble sets in. The typical schematic of Apatow’s agreeably doofy rom-coms takes on troubling implications in its distaff translation, leaving unsavory moral judgments all over Trainwreck like wrinkled clothes haphazardly scattered on a bedroom floor. The rules change when the overgrown manchild in question happens to be a woman, and as the film rigidly adheres to the stock beats of its genre, it makes a casualty of Schumer’s bold, refreshing comic creation.

Schumer incorporated her childhood experiences into the autobiographical script, from her father’s battles with multiple sclerosis to her dynamic with her sister (played with the insight we’ve come to expect from severely underappreciated talent Brie Larson). But even though her character may share her name, Trainwreck’s Amy sports scare quotes. She drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, and screws with the frequency and emotional detachment of a gymnast in the Olympic Village. She’s a rising star at a disreputable gossip-mongering magazine, running stories on ugly celebrity children and how to talk an ambivalent girlfriend into a threesome. When Amy’s queen-bitch boss (a barely recognizable Tilda Swinton, continuing her career-long streak of perfection) assigns her a profile of athletic surgeon Aaron Conners, they inevitably fall for one another. As Dr. Conners, Bill Hader makes a persuasive argument for getting more performers like Bill Hader in romantic comedies. He skillfully holds onto his own goofiness while providing a straight man for Amy’s typhoon of gaffes, and he can comfortably play off of anyone, whether that means true-blue romantic chemistry with Schumer or an easy bro-to-bro vibe with LeBron James.

As is the case with most Apatovian products, all the essential components are in place. A cavalcade of inspired supporting turns, from the Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man as a Jamaican nurse to Ezra Miller as an underage deviant to Marisa Tomei and Daniel Radcliffe as the stars of a wonderfully silly film-within-the-film, keep the laughs coming. And, though it’s hopefully needless to say, Schumer has chops for days. It’s the mark of a true talent to generate big laughs from small moves, and she can get an audience in stitches with a single movement of her eyes.

But as Trainwreck hits its proscribed rom-com beats, it takes on an unsettling subtext. Of course Amy must cut back on the booze and weed if she wants to keep her man’s heart — even Seth Rogen had to ditch his bong to keep Katherine Heigl around — but the matter of her promiscuity is another story. Aaron claims to be cool with it, and then admits that he’s not during a pivotal argument. His judgmental remark is never revisited, and instead, an offhand comment from Amy suggests that Apatow believes her behavior to come from a place of self-loathing. There’s no harm in positing acceptance of commitment as a signifier of maturity in Amy’s character, but the notion that she only has so much sex because she hates herself is an entirely different kettle of fish.

In its heart of hearts, Trainwreck is a surprisingly hide-bound romcom wearing the skintight cocktail dress of a hard-R raunchfest. Apatow’s influence warps the unabashed sex-positivity that Schumer’s cultivated in her stand-up and sketch program, clucking disapprovingly at her choice to sleep around instead of finding someone nice and settling down. America bore witness to Schumer’s directorial prowess in her tone-perfect 12 Angry Men parody on her Comedy Central program earlier this year. If Trainwreck brings in the massive payday its relentless advertising campaign assumes it will, then it’s only a matter of time until Schumer gets behind the camera. Audiences will be all the better for it.