And so this is the central conflict of “Trainwreck”: Does Amy adhere to her long-held notions of resisting monogamy, or does she allow herself to give into the possibility of something truly new and scary? It’s a familiar rom-com dynamic, but the reversal of traditional on-screen gender roles—combined with Schumer and Hader’s easy chemistry—makes “Trainwreck” feel new and fresh.
Hader is surprisingly convincing as a romantic lead, even though he’s playing a character who isn’t exactly suave in sweeping her off her feet. There’s a deeply decent quality about him here reminiscent of a young Jack Lemmon, which is hugely appealing in its own way. He is guileless. He is everything she’s never had in a man before, and everything she’s never been herself. On the heels of his powerfully dramatic performance in last year’s great indie “The Skeleton Twins,” it’s a thrill to see this “Saturday Night Live” alum find so many varied opportunities to spread his wings and show his range. He still gets to be funny, but in a much more understated way.
“Trainwreck” mostly has great energy as it bops along, revealing their burgeoning relationship and even acknowledging the hackneyed nature of the falling-in-love montage. Dave Attell is a welcome and frequent sight as the homeless man who stands on Amy’s corner, heckling passers-by and serving as the movie’s de facto Greek chorus. But like all Apatow movies, “Trainwreck” is overlong and features moments that clearly could have (and should have) been cut for a stronger, tighter final product, especially in the sluggish last third.
As Aaron’s star patient and best friend, LeBron James is kind of wonderful playing a version of himself who’s sensitive, analytical and strangely stingy. It’s an inspired casting choice. But a scene in which he, Chris Evert, Matthew Broderick and Marv Albert stage a middle-of-the-night intervention to help Aaron mend his broken heart grinds the movie’s momentum to a halt. It’s never as clever or funny as it aims to be; at the same time, Apatow may have felt that all these celebrities went to the trouble to shoot the scene, so how could he leave it on the cutting room floor? Similarly, a late moment involving Amy and Ezra Miller as the magazine’s eager intern feels weird and out of place.
Ultimately, “Trainwreck” isn’t as quite as subversive as it suggests at the outset. The grand finale is extraordinarily cheesy, albeit in a self-aware and entertaining way. But the movie finds its own place of peace, on its own terms, and every bit of it is earned. Don’t be ashamed if you find yourself getting a little choked up, too.
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