Director: Judd Apatow
Writer: Amy Schumer
Cast: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson, Vanessa Bayer, Tilda Swinton, Mike Birbiglia, John Cena, LeBron James
Runtime: 125 mins.
2015
Lord knows a female-led, female-written comedy that involves a heaping helping of sex positivity is de facto refreshing. Let's keep that in mind moving forward.
The opening scene of Trainwreck is a sepia-tinted portrayal of a father informing his two daughters that he and their mother will be getting a divorce. The joke is that he tries to explain to the children that he got caught sleeping around both in a language they can understand, and in a way that makes them sympathetic to him. The staging of the scene--the driveway in front of the house, dusk, what looks like heat lightning in the distance--deepens the humor with a sense of melancholy. The scene is funny, weighty, and a perfect prologue to the boozy devil-may-care attitude of our main character, Amy (Amy Schumer), while also providing context for the more conservative settled-down behavior of her sister Kim (Brie Larson).
The rest of the film never matches the jokey melancholy of that first scene.
