Film Review: Trainwreck (2015)

While a lot of romantic comedies are about the battle of the sexes, Trainwreck is a battle of sensibilities. Written by its star, Amy Schumer, its script bears the hallmark of her work as a standup and on her sketch show Inside Amy Schumer. It's incisive in its understanding of the (often sexist) ideas and tropes underlying a lot of popular media, and it seeks to subvert them in ways which are clever, funny and, where possible, dirty. An early scene, in which Schumer's character, also called Amy, has a one-night stand then pretends to fall asleep after receiving cunnilingus, leaving her partner to complain about his needs not being met, is a typical example of something Trainwreck does very well. It takes an established trope - i.e. men are inherently selfish when it comes to sex - then turns it on its head.

Film Review: This Is 40 (2012)

One of the curious things about Judd Apatow as a director is how successful he has been despite so often playing against his strengths. Apatow made his name as one of the best television writers going, working on critically lauded shows like The Ben Stiller Show and The Larry Sanders Show, then helping bring one of the all-time greatest shows ever made, Freaks and Geeks, into existence. Since moving into directing, he has gone completely against the idea of sticking to a script in favour of having his cast improvise extensively.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

You mean I'm not even a quarter of the boy my brother was?

As Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story begins, a runner is trying to find the titular Cox, (John C. Reilly) a legendary country musician, so that he can go on-stage. Finding him standing alone, leaning on a wall, the runner is told to leave Dewey alone, because he has to remember his entire life before he plays. It's at this point that the film unfolds as an extended flashback, taking us back to Dewey's Depression-era childhood, which was marred by tragedy when Dewey accidentally cut his more talented brother in half during an ill-fated machete fight, through his success in the 50s and 60s, and eventual drug and relationship problems.

Right off the bat, the film associates itself with the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk The Line. Not in order to humourlessly replay scenes from that film, a la Epic Movie, but because director Jake Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow use Walk The Line to highlight the cliches of the music biopic genre in general; a tragic childhood, battles with drug addiction, infidelity, a last minute redemption, these are all standard aspects of biopics, and Kasdan and Apatow use the blueprint of Walk The Line to highlight their foibles.

On top of the ridiculous dialogue and characterisation - Dewey's first wife, played by Kristen Wiig, repeatedly tells him that he will never succeed, even after he's had several number one records, and his father constantly tells Dewey that "The wrong kid died!", regardless of any other circumstance - the film-makers add an extra layer of irony to proceedings by making the film look gorgeous. At the risk of falling foul of that old cliche about praising a comedy for its production design probably means the film isn't all that funny, Walk Hard is a seriously good-looking film. The entire production has the sheen of an Oscar contender, and the level of detail and care that has gone into making it look just right contrasts nicely with the silly one-liners and puerile jokes.

And in casting John C. Reilly, a man who has appeared in both crowd-pleasing comedies and Oscar-worthy fare, the film gets someone who can reconcile both aspects of its humour. He gives a completely committed performance that makes Dewey feel like both a real character with genuine pain and a completely silly caricature. In the middle of a fight with his wife, Reilly can say lines like "Edith I told you I can't build your candy house! It will fall apart, the sun will melt the candy, it won't work!" with a deadly seriousness that is far, far funnier than an intentionally wacky delivery. It helps that he can also sing the film's songs, which are all pitch-perfect musical parodies that make for lovely compositions on their own. Walk Hard is at its best when it mixes the ridiculous with the sublime.

However, for all the good of the film there is a paradox at its heart that is never comfortably resolved; it links itself overtly to a specific film, yet it aims to be a satire on a entire genre. Whilst the first half draws primarily on Walk The Line, its second half adopts a more scatter-shot approach. There's an internal consistency to the start that comes from being based on a single source, and that consistency makes the jokes about the cliched nature of biopics all the sharper. Once you have scenes of Dewey meeting the Beatles, as a Brian Wilson surrogate conducting a psychedelic jam, and holding a press conference looking and acting like Bob Dylan circa Don't Look Back, (Reporter: What do your parents think about your protest songs? Dewey: What do your parents think about my protest songs?) that consistency disappears. It's still funny, but it all seems so toothless.

Incidentally, as someone who has always maintained a healthy skepticism regarding the genius and cult of Bob Dylan, the moment in which one character asks what a song with the lyrics "The mouse with the overbite explained/how the rabbits were ensnared" is about, whilst another argues that the song is "very deep", amused me a great deal.

Whilst it never quite matches the comedic heights of its opening half, Walk Hard is a superior spoof in an age when they are few and far between. The love and attention that has clearly gone into the film does much to compensate for its comedic shortcomings, though it does not quite redeem its drop-off halfway through.

Funny People

You always wanted too much from me, and I'm very mad at you.


Before reviewing Funny People, it's best to consider it mathematically.

Funny People is two-thirds of a good film, in that the first two thirds are really strong and the last third is knuckle-chewingly terrible, but the opening two-thirds are riddled with problems which in turn make them only two-thirds good to one third bad, whilst the final third does have enough redeeming features in it to make it about one-quarter good. So, we have two-thirds of two-thirds, which is 44%, and 25% of one-third, which is 8.33(recurring). Add this together, and we can conclude that Funny People is 52.33% good to 47.67% bad.

Let's consider the good two-thirds. The relationship between Ira (Seth Rogen) and George (Adam Sandler) is fascinating, largely thanks to Sandler's ability to play an embittered and angry rich man isolated by his wealth and confronted by his own mortality and his profound existential loneliness. He needs Ira in order to get by on a daily basis, yet he hates having to depend on someone so there is a constant sense of antagonism in their friendship that frequently veers from joking into abuse. It's a relationship that feels very volatile and real, something that could only have come into being during such heightened circumstances as George facing his own death.

It also works as an examination of Adam Sandler, albeit through the cypher of George Simmons. The parallels between the two men are manifold, from their level of success to the types of movies that they made their money with (I could easily see My Best Friend Is A Robot, co-starring Owen Wilson, being made as a Sandler vehicle) and the film even opens with real footage of Sandler making prank phone calls when he was younger (keep an eye/ear out for super-young Janeane Garofalo, Ben Stiller and Judd Apatow). I don't know how aware Sandler was of what Apatow was doing with the story, but the fact that he is prepared to be so thoroughly unpleasant and to utilise so many of his usual tricks (you want annoying voices? He's got 'em!) to that end suggests that the two of them were in cahoots when it came to deconstructing Adam Sandler, the comedy icon, though I think that one or both of them did mediate it to prevent it getting too dark, which is more the pity.

The film represents a crossroads for Apatow as he moves into dramatic territory that he has dabbled with in previous films but never to such an extent. Rather than wholly embrace that ethos and strike out for something new(ish) and make what he clearly wants to make, a James L. Brooks weepy mixed with a Hal Ashby subdued comedy, he relies on his standard dick-and-fart jokes as a crutch. However, rather than propping up the film they frequently trip it up. Whenever things get to serious or interesting, someone will swear or say something stupid, not so much cutting the treacle as burning the whole cake. It's very, very frustrating.

And that's without even getting on to the stand-up in the film which, for a film with 'funny' in the title, is painfully un-so. Often this is intentional, with comics like Randy (Aziz Ansari) serving to illustrate what Apatow considers to be bad stand-up, but that practiced by Ira and George isn't much better. There are some good routines in there, but most often they're just crass and dumb. Maybe it's just my taste in stand-up but I for one found it really tough to sit through so many routines that had so little impact.

The number of celebrity cameos in the film is also incredibly distracting, to the point that you end up with a scene in which George gets life lessons from Eminem, who then proceeds to scream abuse at Ray Romano. A sequence that is delirious in the moment, but really has no place in the film.

The number of routines and cameos showcases the other problem with the film; its general lack of focus. When the film was announced, many people seemed to think that it had the potential to be Judd Apatow's Annie Hall, the film that took him from being just a comedy film-maker to a film-maker of substance. Sadly, it isn't his Annie Hall, it's his Anhedonia. At two and a half hours, the film is way, way, way too long and there are so many bits that do nothing to enhance the story. Subplots such as a romance for Ira with another stand-up, footage of the sitcom that his roommate (Jason Schwartzmann) is on and the entire final third (in which a long-lost love plot is introduced) only serve to distract from the central relationship. You can't help but think that if Apatow had had what Woody Allen had, i.e., a really tough editor who could say ''this is terrible. Cut in half, get rid of the murder mystery and focus on the relationship with Annie'', then he could have delivered a film which was so much more potent and focused, not muddled and indigestible.

I think that people should see Funny People since, if nothing else, it boasts some great performances (I've not mentioned Eric Bana because he's only in the awful final third but he is great and is the only reason that that part of the film could be left in) and, for all its frustrations, it remains above all other things a very interesting failure.