Amy Schumer’s ‘Trainwreck’ leaves the station with mostly strong reviews

Writer-star Amy Schumer’s bawdy romantic comedy “Trainwreck” is anything but a disaster, according to film critics. The Judd Apatow-directed romp about a hard-living magazine writer (Schumer) wrestling with monogamy after meeting a down-to-earth sports doctor (Bill Hader) is being hailed as a funny, confident big-screen debut for Schumer, even if the movie is overlong and occasionally uneven.

The Times’ Rebecca Keegan calls “Trainwreck” a “surprisingly touching and raucously funny R-rated comedy.” She continues: “Don’t be distracted by its low-cut blouse, ‘Trainwreck’ is all about the heart, as the movie asks a question that has paid therapists’ and pop singers’ bills for years — do naughty girls need love too? (Spoiler alert: You bet they do!). Finding that love involves several hilarious, you-only-live-once-era detours for Schumer, in the kind of lovable screw-up role that made Bill Murray a star.”

As for Apatow, Keegan says he delivers his “signature tone of sweet raunch,” though the film “could use a haircut, and some scenes seem to exist solely for their punchlines.” On the whole, though, “both star and director have raised each other’s game.”

The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis describes the movie as “a sexual bildungsroman cum romantic comedy jumping with pop-cultural references and edged with razored social cultural critique.” The result is “often extremely funny, even if it never approaches the radicalness of [Schumer’s] greatest, most dangerous work.”

As with any young talent, Dargis says, Schumer “has a way to go, including as a screenwriter. ‘Trainwreck’ has groaners and dead spots … and its jokes about race don’t have the penetrating wit that her material on sex and gender does.” The writer-star is “at her strongest when she insists that women aren’t distressed damsels but — as they toddle, walk and race in the highest of heels, the tightest of skirts, the sexiest, mightiest of poses — the absolute agents of their lives and desires.”

The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday says, “Schumer proves her cinematic bona fides in ‘Trainwreck,’ a strikingly assured feature film debut in which she proves herself as authentic an actress as she is deft as a writer.”

What makes the movie work, Hornaday writes, “is that [Schumer] approaches every beat — funny, serious and in-between — in an open, undefended state. And she’s blessed with the perfect opposite number in Hader, who delivers yet another heartfelt, hugely appealing performance as a decent, if slightly out-of-his-depth, Everyman.” Also lending an assist is LeBron James, who displays “expert, deadpan timing.”

The Boston Globe’s Ty Burrell says “Trainwreck” is “hardly a revolutionary act, and that may come as a disappointment to some (and a relief to others). What it is, instead, is a very entertaining romantic comedy, conventional on the surface while standing all sorts of genre clichés and gender assumptions discreetly on their heads.”

Echoing his fellow critics, Burrell says the movie “goes on too long,” though the “deep bench” helps. (Colin Quinn, Brie Larson and Tilda Swinton are among the supporting players). In the end, it’s “Schumer’s show, and she carries it with such ease that you know she’s capable of greater things. … Where she goes from here should be fascinating to watch.”

For some critics, though, “Trainwreck” goes off the rails.

The Village Voice’s Stephanie Zacharek writes, “‘Trainwreck,’ if nothing else, strives to be smart.” But “while the picture is occasionally very funny … it also feels carefully constructed to make its points, chief among them that men can get away with all kinds of bad or crazy behavior that women can’t.”

The “much bigger, more insidious problem,” Zacharek says, is that it feels like Schumer’s vision has been subsumed by Apatow’s, which reinforces conventional notions of partnership and family life. “Apatow and Schumer probably believe they’ve made a feminist picture, but the reality is something different. This is a conventional movie dressed as a progressive one.”

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