Trainwreck (Judd Apatow, 2015)

3/10
This movie bummed me out. I am a fan of Amy Schumer, her stand-up album is great. Her show is a little hit and miss but most variety/comedy sketch shows are. I like that she's not afraid to show the ugly "other side" of sex from a female perspective. God knows we see enough of it from the male perspective.
So I was looking forward to seeing her translate similar ideas into the screenplay she wrote for her first major big screen vehicle. But what's strange about Trainwreck is how incredibly conservative it is, standing in stark contrast to Schumer's stand up.
First of all, I take issue with the title. Why "Trainwreck"? You expect Amy Schumer's character (also named Amy) to live up to this billing as some kind of horrendous mess of a person. Instead she's a girl with a promiscuous past who can't keep a man, and she drinks and smokes and goes clubbing. That's it. This is a trainwreck? What is this, the 50's? Reverse the genders and it's the same role Seth Rogen plays in any Judd Apatow movie (he's the director here). Except he's not called a trainwreck, he's just...the lead character. In her comedy act, Schumer gives off a very sex-positive vibe - that it's OK for girls to sleep around and be gross if it's who they are and what they want to do. After all, it's OK for guys to do it. So why did she write this movie? It's so romcom-by-the-numbers I started looking for signs of it being a really subtle parody. But nope, it follows the exact same Hollywood romcom shtick - a woman whose life just isn't complete until she finds A Good Man (Bill Hader here) and changes her ways and settles down with him. There's even a post-breakup, pre-reunion "getting her life together" montage of Amy throwing out half-empty wine bottles and bongs, for christ's sake.
So for me, this poses the troubling question: who is the real Amy Schumer? Is she really the sex-positive character she portrays in her act and on her show? And if so, does that mean Trainwreck is her selling out and writing a generic, conservative romcom just to get herself a starring role in Hollywood?
Or, on the other hand, are the conservative values at the heart of Trainwreck reflective of Schumer's actual attitudes? And if that's true, is the sex-positive character she adopts in her act just a gimmick to titillate and sell albums and tickets? I'm not sure which would be more troubling.
In any case, I would be willing to dismiss those concerns if the movie was funny, but it's not. There are a couple of good lines here and there and a really good bit of physical comedy at the end, but that's about it. Most of the one-liner jokes land with a thud. I'll give it a score of 3 entirely based on the acting, which is unexpectedly great across the board. Schumer does more heavy lifting than I thought she would and handles it very well. Colin Quinn is also really good as her ailing father, and Lebron James and John Cena are really enjoyable in cartoony versions of themselves. Bill Hader is unremarkable but he's the straight man so he doesn't have much to do beyond deliver his lines competently. I was looking forward to this movie for a couple reasons but it failed to deliver on all counts. Even worse, it soured my opinion of its main attraction.