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Trainwreck


TRAINWRECK

Flavor of the month standup comedienne Amy Shumer got her chance at movie stardom with Trainwreck, a 2015 comedy, written by Shumer and directed by Judd Apatow, that contains the seeds for at least four different really good movies; unfortunately, Shumer and Apatow attempt to combine them all into one movie and what you get is an unfocused mess that provides sporadic laughs and is about 45 minutes too long.

Shumer plays Amy (a lot of work apparently went into picking out a character name), a magazine writer who is trying to find the right article that will get her the associate editor job at her magazine. Shumer also plays Amy, a woman struggling with issues regarding her neglectful aging father (Colin Quinn), who is now in a nursing home and her opposing views with her sister (Oscar winner Brie Larson) about his care. Amy is also a commitment-shy single gal caught in a semi-serious relationship with a hunky but boring guy (John Cena) who is looking for something more in a relationship. Shumer also plays Amy, a commitment-shy career woman who finds possible romance with a cute sports doctor (Bill Hader) but gets scared when the guy starts developing real feelings for her.

The film gets an "A" for effort because all the stories that make up this cinematic canvas have the potential to be a really good movie on their own, but trying to wrap them all up in one movie was absolutely a case of newcomer Shumer biting off more that she could chew. You would think that a proven commodity like Apatow would have Shumer's ear a little more and helped her streamline the screenplay, rich with possibilities but far beyond the scope of an inexperienced screen actress, who has mistaken the ability to handle a standup microphone with the ability to carry a major motion picture, but I don't blame Shumer entirely because apparently the woman was given free reign to do whatever she wanted here, otherwise we wouldn't be saddled with a comedy that runs over two hours long and feels like four.

Shumer clearly has a lot of fans in the business and apparently most of them agreed to appear in this film. In addition to Hader and Quinn, a host of past and present SNL cast members appear throughout, but if the truth be told, the biggest laughs in the movie are provided by WWE superstar John Cena and NBA legend Lebron James, who we are supposed to believe is Hader's BFF in this scenario. I checked Shumer's IMDB page after watching this movie and noticed that she has no other films on the horizon at this time and after watching this, I wasn't terribly shocked.