Butler's Cinema Scene

Amy Schumer, Bill Hader…terrified by romance

“TRAINWRECK”  My rating: B- (Opening wide on July 17)

125 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Amy Schumer, the hottest thing in comedy right now, makes a largely effortless transition to the big screen in “Trainwreck,” a dirty-minded laughfest with a warm fuzzy heart.

In addition to starring with Bill Hader, Schumer also wrote the screenplay.  Judd Apatow directs, and is usually the case with his efforts (“This Is 40”, “Funny People”), the results often are scattered and overlong.

But the mere presence of Schumer onscreen and the pervasiveness of her uniquely biting-bitter-bawdy comic sensibility makes “Trainwreck” a keeper.  It’s more like a collection of sketches than a narrative whole, but when you’re laughing this hard it’s hard to complain.

Things get off to a wonderfully sarcastic start with an opening scene from the childhood of Schumer’s character, Amy.  Amy and her little sister Kim are being told by their philandering father that the family is breaking up.  Dad (Colin Quinn) is a glorious sleazebag who asks his little girls how they’d feel if they were told they could only play with one doll for the rest of their lives.

“They’re making new dolls every year,” reasons their reprobate father.

The moral of this father-daughter meeting: Monogamy is unnatural.

And that’s a philosophy the grown-up Amy embraces. She chugs drinks and puffs pot. She’s a bit of a slut.  She sends her boy toys home after sex — no all-night cuddles.

She works for a scuzzy/hip men’s magazine.  Amy’s editor (a nearly unrecognizable Tilda Swinton) is a vampirish Brit beauty whose indifference to everyone save herself is breathtaking — and that attitude is reflected on the publication’s pages: “You’re Not Gay — She’s Boring.”  “A Guide to Masturbating at Work.”

LeBron James and Bill Hader…a comedy star is born?

Amy is assigned to do a writeup on Aaron (Hader), a rising star in the sports-medicine world. (This seemingly arbitrary choice of professions for the male lead is actually quite clever, allowing basketball stars LeBron James and Amar’e Stoudemire to play themselves.  Who knew they could seem so effortless on screen, or that James would be so good at presenting himself as a touchy-feely guy always looking out for his good friend the doctor?)

Anyway, Amy quickly gets the MD into the sack, and then freaks when this very decent fellow shows an interest. (“What’s wrong with you that you want to be with me?”) Most of the movie chronicles their on-again, off-again romance as Aaron tries to break through her cynical view of love.

Subplots involve Amy’s relationship with her sister Kim (Brie Larson), who’s happily married to a good-natured doofus (Mike Birbiglia) and raising his weirdly sensitive young son (Evan Brinkman).

And then there’s the trauma of putting their alcoholic father in an elder-care home.

For all its raunch — and there is some ear-burning stuff here — “Trainwreck” has an essential sweetness that is quite satisfying.  One could wish for a more disciplined approach, but then I suppose it would no longer be a Judd Apatow movie.

| Robert W. Butler