the Amy Schumer thread

the Zacharek review ends up focusing on the old Apatow "secret" conservatism thing, which I'm not entirely sure is a problem with his films

but, Funny People WAS dreadful, i didn't even see the one after that

I used to like him, too, but his last two have been the worst kind of make-me-angry indulgent.

I'll defend his better stuff but yeah Funny People is p unforgivable. what was the other one you're referring to?

oh yeah Life at 40 or whatever. god that was horrible

this is 40 is one of the worst movies ever made by anybody. there are like 3 jokes thanks to chris o'dowd and the rest is hideous classist aggressively milquetoast bullshit

Colin Quinn rules

im interested in trainwreck tho. it looks sufficiently different from whatever the fuck his last two movies are or were attempting to be (prob because schumer is writing) - like i still cant possible imagine what the fuck he thought he was doing with funny people and this is 40

I liked the audacity of this is 40: how they lived in a multimillion dollar house in Pasadena but we were supposed to sympathize with the fact that, due to paul rudd's vanity record label failing, they might have to downsize.

I did laugh when melissa mccarhy said "this is what happens when you corner a rat"

yeah it was so tone deaf, so removed from any reality

xp

Sounds like it has some of the same problem that Funny People did, in desperately trying to get you to sympathize with rich assholes (who just happen to be really similar to Apatow and his friends and family)

I used to like him, too,

Embrace your fate; you're all going to catch up to my POV eventually.

as referred to above:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/trainwreck

I can understand people having a problem with the "rich people have problems too!" element of This Is 40 but there was a frankness and honesty to the marraige/raising kids scenes that I liked.

This Is 40 was great

Albert Brooks and Melissa McCarthy were great. Could've done without the rest of it.

you're all going to catch up to my POV eventually.

nah, Freaks & Geeks is all-time, and Knocked Up/40yo Virgin def hold up (I would throw Forgetting Sarah Marshall in there too altho he was only tangentially involved)

the trailers I've seen for this make it look like a LeBron James film with some other people in it. Is that accurate?

I hope so!

xp yeah, Apatow (and Feig) will basically get a lifetime pass for me for creating Freaks and Geeks. even anything their collaborators do will merit some interest
pretty much agree with your rankings there Οὖτις. I will catch This is 40 at some point when I can remember to...

I think Apatow is, qualitatively, very similar to Cameron Crowe (nb: have not seen the last two Cameron Crowe movies). People champion some of his films and trash others but they all seem similarly MOR-ish and not bad to me.

What I saw of This Is 40 seemed pretty decent but I was watching from a hotel hot tub so I was probably just vibing with the onscreen opulence.

nah, Freaks & Geeks is all-time, and Knocked Up/40yo Virgin def hold up (I would throw Forgetting Sarah Marshall in there too altho he was only tangentially involved)

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:05 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. I think the ending of 40-Year-Old Virgin is the hardest I've laughed in a movie theater. They're actually ending the movie with this! And they're committing to it! And Rudd's doing the scat-singing part!

i think comedies about rich assholes only work when they're also narcissists and misanthropists, i.e. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, Seinfeld (not that he was supposed to be especially rich in the sitcom, but i find his real life rich asshole character amusing).

(who just happen to be really similar to Apatow and his friends and family)

I think him casting his actual friends and family makes those last two films so much worse.

in Funny People the rich assholes ARE meant to be narcissists and misanthropes though, right? I liked Funny People, I've never seen any other Apatow films

Sandler's character in Funny People is clearly meant to be p unsympathetic/narcissistic/mysanthropic but it still doesn't work imo - way too long, with an unnecessary third act, and all sorts of sequences that are kind of gross (playing the Beatles, the shit w Apatow's children, etc.)

Would've preferred a film about the Yo Teach! subplot

the ending is weird, like the bit in the car where Sandler tells Rogen that he isn't funny and Rogen tells him he's glad if it means he's not like Sandler seems like the natural conclusion- like the message of the movie is basically that comedians are assholes- but then there's this odd tagged on scene where the two of them are reconciled.

the bit with Sandler playing the John Lennon song is kind of perfect, even if it probably wasn't intended to make his character look like a jerk

i saw it on tv while house-sitting and don't remember much...i assume that the rich assholes have a turn toward sincerity, selflessness, and redemption at some point?

xp

actually no

Best part about Sandler playing the Beatles song with session pros is that, for a week, my local theater was showing TWO films that James Gadson was in (the other being Soul Power...even though the Bill Withers segment was drumless).

soref otm about the tacked on ending, which feels v unearned

xp

Anthony Lane's review for The New Yorker pretty much confirms everything I feared this would be:

Are there any modern comedies that hold their nerve, and pursue their radical options to a bitter end? More than eighty years ago, the censor Joseph Breen was so appalled by the carnal candor of Barbara Stanwyck, in “Baby Face,” that he strong-armed Warner Bros. into cleaning up the ending and teaching the heroine a lesson, but Breen would not be needed these days. Though a movie like “Trainwreck” sounds filthy enough, it cleans itself up as it goes along—setting off at a rough lick, yet soon displaying signs of moral decency. As in previous Apatow films, the temptations of togetherness eventually drown the siren call of the boudoir. Amy, though informed by Steven, “You’re not nice,” is nice enough to befriend a homeless man outside her apartment; her philandering is not that of a genuine free spirit but of a conscience wrenched out of joint by an equally faithless father (Colin Quinn), who now, as if paying for his sins, suffers from multiple sclerosis and resides in an assisted-living facility. Amy has a sister (Brie Larson), who has a husband and a stepson, and, fiercely though Amy mocks their domestic harmony, they have much to teach her, the end result being a long shot, late in the proceedings, of all four of them gathered for a group hug. And that, as it were, is Amy’s final instruction: “Be happy for me, fuckers.” So much for the promise of the title. “Trainwreck” sticks to the rails.

i saw it yesterday and liked it a lot!!

i only just figured out that despite the title this is not a sequel to pineapple express

Lefsetz, he has Schumer opinions: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2015/07/18/trainwreck/

Just call me a constant warning to avoid the industrial hype complex. With standards so low it cannot be trusted. It’s a bandwagon of low-level taste that cannot be respected, you have to be brain-dead to pay attention to it.

So this was 35% hilarity and 65% tedium. Schumer has some great physical comedy and there are a bunch of funny asides, but whenever they try to be raunchy (toilet scene) it's just dull.

Worst was the 180 from eulogy to haranguing her sister out of nowhere.

most of the flaws people say are there are there, but i'm glad i came at it from a "hopefully it's better than This Is 40" angle than a "hopefully it's as good as her show" angle

any word on whether the inclusion of matthew broderick was a failed, intentionally random moment or was it a call-back to a deleted scene?

apatow was doing so well with the lebron plot and then just blew his meta wad all over the place

So much for the promise of the title. “Trainwreck” sticks to the rails.
― The New Gay Sadness (cryptosicko), Thursday, July 16, 2015 9:10 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well so does Schumer's comedy, ultimately.

She looks like a cross between an angel on a Victorian greeting card and a Campbell's Soup Kid

This description made me laugh.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, July 16, 2015 11:32 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think she looks like these plus cabbage patch kid! Last week my dad asked me why Amy Shumacher was so raunchy and was telling me how he tried to explain to my mom that despite looking like a "corn-fed Midwestern angel" she was really filthy.

actually that is just the way corn-fed midwestern angels are

we know that in the midwest, which is why we stay here

amy is raunchy bc instead of being a corn-fed midwestern angel she's a NY-born jew

or like my mom says - she's just the heir to joan rivers' shtick

x-post - *I* know that but he didn't.

http://i.imgur.com/qTGckgq.gif

Are there any modern comedies that hold their nerve, and pursue their radical options to a bitter end?

Bad Santa? Observe and Report?

I thought this was pretty harsh but at the same time convinced me to just skip getting a sitter for this movie: http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/chastened-amy-trainwreck-ant-man-review/

Bad Santa doesn't really

Observe and Report def in a class all its own, no wonder it tanked Jody Hill's movie career