In Review: "Trainwreck"

Out of nowhere comes Amy Schumer. Anyone remember her from 8 months ago? I don't. But then she brings us this brilliant movie that turns the dating world on its head and high-fives all feminists. It was a thing of beauty.

Someone did their marketing really well-- they got me to know who this girl was, enjoy her a little, get me in a theater seat to watch this indie movie I would have never seen, and totally fall in love with it.

The Story

Amy (played by Amy Schumer) likes to party and likes men... likes to sleep with men. She has a crummy job where she works at a womanizing men's magazine run by a down-talking pain-in-the-butt (played by Tilda Swinton). She has a sister (played by Bri Larson) who is married and has an adopted son and continues to warn her of the perils of her ways. She has a father (played by Colin Quinn) who doesn't believe in monogamy, and thoroughly educated his girls at an early age.

Amy is assigned to do a story about Aaron, a sports doctor who is going to do this intensive surgery to fix this oh-so-important athlete's knee. Hating the basic concept of sports, Amy goes in with a closed mind but ends up with what she believes to be a hook-up. Turns out this crazy guy actually likes her and wants to date her. Oh the horror.

Amy learns a lot about herself and about love through this relationship, as any girl would in a romantic comedy. But only Amy Schumer can do it this way. It's a role-reversal romantic comedy that now makes me gag whenever I watch an actual romantic comedy.

The Stars

Where did this girl come from? I had literally never heard of her before this movie started being talked about. And then all of the sudden that's all anyone is talking about is this crazy feminist comic. Now she's got her own TV show which has so many fantastic skits and she is on every magazine cover (scandalous and otherwise) that you can't walk 10 feet without running into this girl. And she is awesome. Not only did she star in this movie but she also wrote it. You know, because she could. And someone let her.

Bill Hader is good as an awkward doctor who has totally fallen for this girl. It's nice to see him in something different, but I much prefer his other comedic work.

The Message

The romantic comedies want you to believe that a girl's life doesn't start until she meets the right guy. They want you to believe that she is not the person she is meant to be until she finds that special someone. That's why she has to get makeovers of all kinds because as she is now is not good enough for Mr. Perfect. And when our girl finds Mr. Right, her life will forever be perfect.

This is all false. This has nothing to do with real life, as Amy tells us. No guy can change a girl- only a girl can change who she is. No one will force her to change. And when you do happen to find that person who makes you feel like $1 million, you won't always be perfectly happy. And you're relationship will not automatically and always be 100% perfect. Because there's this thing called life. And life gets messy and people in life are messy so you have to fight and work hard to keep that relationship.

It is really not until Amy realizes that she is hurting herself and the people around her that she walks away from her life of booze and men. She already was in a relationship with the right guy, and it didn't magically solve anything. They had to work at it and have fights and long night talks and get really frustrated. And still their lives and relationship were not perfect. Because that's real life. Not some romantic comedy.

Overall

The comedy she does is unlike any other I have seen. She's not the skinniest or the prettiest star out there, but that's not her joke. Yeah she really did party and sleep around when she was younger, but that's not her joke. Her joke is about this idea we have created about love. The idea that women are the ones who want to save sex for some magic later date, that men are the ones who ask the girl out, that women are the ones who cry and eat ice cream after a breakup-- I could go on and on.

Not only does Amy tackle the idea of love, but she also looks at sexism in the workplace, body image issues, and the poor state of nursing homes. One of my favorite scenes is when the magazine staff has a meeting where only the male reporters get to pitch their ideas and only the male reporters get a say in what they write. I love another scene where Amy lists off what she didn't eat today. And finally, the references to how ridiculously expensive it is to take care of your aging parent.

But the movie wasn't perfect. It was over 2 hours long and several scenes could have been cut for either being not that funny or just dragging the moving action down. I also didn't like the ending very much. It felt a lot like what I would see in every other romantic comedy, and I kept waiting for something different to happen. Maybe even some bluppers would have satisfied my need to laugh a little at the end.

But overall, this movie is for all the romantics and all of the realists. It's for anyone who has gotten their heart broken and had to start over. It's for anyone who has fallen in love with Amy Schumer since her recent explosion of fame.

3 out of 4 Amy Schumers

In Review: "Inside Out"

When was the last time you said, "Let's watch it again!" after sitting through a 2-hour movie? Maybe when you were 5? Mine was after seeing this movie once last Friday and the second time on Saturday. In my opinion, this is the best Disney/Pixar movie since "Finding Nemo". It blows "Up" out of the water.

The Story

Riley and her family are moving to a new home with a new school and a new group of friends. That's the basic plot line, but what makes it more exciting and more innovative is taking a look at what is going on inside of Riley's head during this life-changing event.

Riley has 5 core emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). These emotions run how Riley reacts and interacts with the world around her through a control panel in her head called "Headquarters". But what happens if Joy and Sadness accidentally leave "Headquarters" and Disgust, Anger and Fear have to run the show? How will Joy and Sadness find their way back? And what is lurking inside of Riley's brain?

The Stars

All of the voices were perfect fits for their characters. Some were obvious choices like Lewis Black for Anger (he always seems to be yelling) and Mindy Kaling for Disgust (she has the best mean-girl voice). Others were surprises like Bill Hader as the concerned Fear and Amy Poehler as Joy, who usually plays characters with dry humor and not usually bright caricatures.

The Message

This movie addresses so much: how taboo sadness is in society (especially for women), how controlling depression can be, and how much family and love means to the human soul.

The lesson I liked the most from this movie is how important it is to feel -- feel all emotions. Not just kids or women or men or whites or blacks but all people! Even animals! (Stay til the credits to see more instances of what happens inside of people's heads.)

It is so wrong of us to shirk an emotion of the right to be felt, even the ones society deems as "bad" or "wrong". When we are angry, we have the right to be angry and show that anger. If we don't, it can hurt us and our connections with the people and the world around us. Imagine a world without fear or without sadness. People would be jumping off buildings and living without sympathy or compassion. Fear protects us from doing things that will hurt us emotionally and physically. It knows that sticking our hand in an electric socket is a bad idea and so is distancing ourselves from the people who love us. Sadness lets us feel what other people are feeling and live outside of what we want and what we feel.

All of these emotions shape who we are and how we react to the world around us. And no one doesn't have one of these emotions. No one is without fear or sadness. Everyone gets down sometimes and no one is down forever. The human mind is so complicated, and every mind is so different from the next. For example, during the movie, when Riley was angry there were times when I felt sad. But that doesn't make it wrong, it just makes us different.

Overall

The coolest part about this movie is how original, inventive and well-researched it is. Some of my favorite parts include when Joy and Sadness visit Imagination Land where all of her daydreams and imaginings live (like a cookie house, Cloud Land and the French Fries Forest), travel through the Abstract Thought Machine which allows Riley to break down and understand concepts and travel on the Train of Thought that contains all of the information, imaginings and ideas she comes up with during the day. Pixar has also come up with this idea that each memory, big and small, becomes a tiny sphere that is assigned to an emotion based on how that memory makes us feel. Some of these memories powers our Personality Islands that make up who we are. The pieces of the puzzle are so well researched and thought out, you know they talked to some psychologists before beginning animation.

This is what Pixar looks like when it's on its game. This is the inventive, creative stuff that we all feel in love with when we saw "Toy Story". This movie will most likely not make much money (because there's not much merchandise to sell) nor will all the kids be talking about it (it's much more adult than a movie about fish). But I know this is one I would want my children to see, and their children to see, and their children. It's one of the very best.

4 out of 4 Memories