'Trainwreck'

Judd Apatow may never edit his movies down to a reasonable length, but Amy Schumer and Bill Hader team up to make Trainwreck something lovable.

It's been proven time and time again that yes, women are funny. And yes, women can carry a movie to both critical and financial glory. But a stand-up comedian making the leap from a Comedy Central show to the lead role in a Judd Apatow movie? That's uncharted territory, at least before Trainwreck. The aforementioned leaper is Amy Schumer, starring as a young journalist in New York City who's raised by her father (Colin Quinn, a genius in other mediums whose pause-talk-pause acting style couldn't be more out of place here) to fear monogamy. Instead of settling down with a nice, cuddly Mike Birbiglia type like her sister (Brie Larson) she instead pursues a series of unsuitable men in an effort to avoid love at any cost.

This includes John Cena, who shines as Amy's semi-boyfriend with massive glutes, homosexual tendencies, and dreams of becoming a CrossFit king. But when she's assigned to write a story about Dr. Aaron Conners (Bill Hader), a sports surgeon to the stars, she encounters a genuinely sweet guy who challenges her preconceived notions and also terrifies her to death.

If this sounds a bit like tried-and-true terrain, that's because it is; Schumer (who wrote the screenplay) and Apatow aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. What they have done is put together a romantic comedy that's crass when it's time for laughs and adorable when it needs to be; more importantly, it does depicts the fear of commitment in a unique sort of way, one that'll speak to a generation with similar concerns about the sustainability of long-term relationships. There's no attempt to quell those concerns besides "love makes it all better," of course, but hey, baby steps.