Plot Details: This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
All Aboard!
Plot Overview
The start of this trainwreck is when their father Gordon Townsend (Colin Quinn) announces to his seated children nine-year-old Amy (Devin Fabry) and five-year-old Kim (Carla Oudin), “Girls, your mother and I are getting divorced.” He brings them up to date with, “You love your doll,” he loves their mommy, but it would be so dull if a girl had only the one doll to play with her whole childhood. Well, “There's other dolls.” Gordon gives a list of them making himself out to be a womanizer, which is why their mommy is divorcing him. Okay. He ends by teaching his daughters the litany, “Monogamy isn't realistic.”
Fast forward to “23 years later.” Amy (Amy Schumer) “didn't understand that word at the time, but now I know.” An amount of footage establishes her as a slut (“This is clearly not my first rodeo.”) Her sister Kim (Brie Larson) meanwhile has married and settled down (“Having a family is fun.”) When moving their dad to an assisted living facility (“Dad's MS is bad”)—their mom has since passed away—it becomes apparent Kim has sided with their mom in the divorce, Amy with their dad.
Amy is a writer for a men's rag called "S'nuff." It churns out stories like “… Porn to Masturbate To.” Lead editor Dianna (Tilda Swinton) gives her a wigged out assignment to do a profile on sports doctor Aaron Connors (Bill Hader). Amy and the doc take in a movie together in which a dog-walker with a whole pack of canines is approached by a woman who considers hiring him to mind her mutt. Aaron takes a shine to Amy (“I think we really like each other and we should start dating.”) As the movie progresses we see further clips from the movie within a movie, where the woman moves onto the dogwalker's bench and seeks assurances he'll pamper her pooch. When (inevitable) conflicts arise, it is necessary to forgive and move on (“Everybody's left a dog in a hot car.”) Some added sports scenes are thrown in at the end. As the credits rolled, the girl seated behind me kept calling for “Bloopers!” but it seemed to me the whole movie was the blooper track, about what one would expect from a trainwreck.
Ideology
There's a tension in the story between Gordon the family patriarch now who claims no grandkids as his own, and his daughter Kim who has a stepson Allister (Evan Brinkman.) The kid is smart but with a personality that would invite bullying at school. Amy sides with her dad, but Kim can't convince him at all he does have a grandson. It reminds one of Solomon's saying, (Eccl. 4:13-14) “Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor.”
The idiom “he that is born in his kingdom” probably corresponds to one of our English idioms where, for instance, looking at a disheveled ragamuffin we would do well to consider him a "native son" who through some accidental circumstance of life slid into poverty, i.e. “becometh poor.” In this movie that would be Dumpster Guy (Dan Soder) whom Amy treats like a human being. She and the sports doc have this in common, that he belongs to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) an organization that sends volunteer doctors to needy countries. [I've posted a poem that makes a similar connection.] “Out of prison he cometh to reign” probably corresponds to our idiom, “Where were you raised, in a barn?” A king displaying poor sensibilities would seem like he just got out of prison to assume kingship. A family patriarch, say, should have better manners.
In this funny movie Amy's lover Steven (John Cena) prompted to talk dirty during sex gives out some male bravado and sports talk appropriate to the team locker room. But the doctor's friend real athlete NBA star LeBron James pegs his locker room talk as watching ‘Downton Abbey’, “'cause I'm not going to practice tomorrow and all the guys are talking about it and I'm left out.” If we consider that Solomon knew about writing, that there's no end to translations and we'd tire ourselves studying the original tongues (Eccl. 12:12), then his clue to us is of the poor but wise child of early native English whose usage has lost currency but is better than the dominating modern English that seems to have come out of a locker room. The NBA star is called Lebron "King" James, corresponding to the King James Version (KJV.) Gordon whose memorabilia his daughters were sorting through said he felt that he himself was memorabilia. There's memories associated with words and expressions used in modern Bible translations corresponding to relatively dirty talk that gets acquired in the world. The early sacred dialect of the KJV avoids that.
In “Trainwreck” that would be demonstrated by the KJV word fornication we're admonished to avoid. Fornication is human sexual intercourse other than between a husband and his wife. Modern translations substitute for it the expression "sexual immorality" that's relative and means different things to different people. Surveys show people think sexual immorality means like a one night stand, or having sex apart from love. I've had girls tell me they're moral because they use a condom, or that they only do it with one guy they're seeing at a time. The list goees on. Amy's rule is to “never spend the night.” Beyond that what she does is to her moral. If that list weren't bad enough, there's what her magazine covers, too. We're better off with the KJV's avoidance of fornication. Amy is the “strong writer” while Dumpster Guy just tells it like it is with his signs, e.g., "I blame you."
The “old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished” is Gordon who hoards his medication instead of taking it day by day. The cure to these foolish modern Bible versions is comparing them as once was done with prophets, (1Cor. 14:29-33) “Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge.” I get shut down in churches when I want to do Bible verse comparison during studies. The teacher may feel I should come to him after class and discuss which version he should use, but that's hoarding rebuke, a non-starter. I just want to compare them verse by verse as we go along, and if there are too many difficulties, maybe he should reconsider which version he's using.
The problem came to a head with Amy when her boss Dianna reasonably told her that having sex with someone underage was not a problem—“We've all done it”—and beating up her sex partner was not a problem per se. No, it was when both activities came together. The problem in churches is not bringing a newfangled Bible version into a traditional study where they're using the sacred dialect derived from early English, just do it respectfully. And it's not beating up on the KJV. People do that, too. No, it's when one brings a new translation into a traditional study and disrespectfully preempts the KJV.
Production Values
This film “” (2015) was directed by Judd Apatow. It was written by Amy Schumer who also starred in it along with Bill Halder and Brie Larson. They were all hilarious. Muscled hunk John Cena manages to make the most of his supporting role.
MPAA rated it R for strong sexual content, nudity, language and some drug use. There's an outstanding use of music like the Billy Joel jam, “Uptown Girl” in the operating theater. There are great cameos, especially from the sports figures. The dialogue flows well from character to character, and will at times even seem unscripted. The sports elements do, however, contribute to a problematic length of the script. Schumer mixes the comedy that includes sarcasm, slapstick, and toilet humor. We get beautiful lighting in classy restaurant scenes with a good depth of field and a saturated look on account of the movie being shot on film rather than in digital format.
Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation
This film was lots of fun, full of laughs, and had some zingy one-liners like “That's gay!” and “Welcome to the whitest couple in America”, which had nothing to do with race or sexual orientation. It was a good first effort at writing and a passable comedy that mixed it up. Just don't bring kids to see it or expect lofty dialogue. Enjoy!
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Good Date Movie. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall product rating: three and a half stars out of five.
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