Ah, gender politics; the one topic where, no matter what I
say, someone out there will want to chew me out for it. While this has a lot of
the traditional trappings of a rom-com, like the overly dramatic finale and the
third-act break-up that irks me so, credit where it’s due to Amy Schumer
because she seems determined to lacerate gender roles when it comes to these
films. The way it’s done is extremely risky, as I’ve seen writers try to flip
the genders in order to make a statement about said genders and have it fail
quite disastrously.
Here, it feels more like this is the result of women
learning how to interact with the opposite sex from growing with rom-coms where
the men are supposed to be the woman-conquerors and any attempts of them trying
to be genuinely kind-hearted has to have some sort of sexual/monetary motive
behind it. It’s almost like a call to arms for romantic love, and I mean actual
romantic love and not just 'I’m an uptight woman who needs a penis in my life'
as is usually the case in these movies. The whole 'following bad media for
advice' thing isn’t limited to just the women either; through the eyes of a
younger and naïve intern who works with Amy, we also see how media can warp the
expectations of gender roles and sexuality for guys as well, particularly
teenagers. As much as statutory rape isn’t exactly the funniest thing in the
world, a close pass is given for at least having it serve a bigger purpose than
just embarrassment over nearly having sex with someone who is underaged.
Among the other things that this film takes that I normally
can’t stand and make funny is the walking, talking gay joke that is John Cena.
As I have learnt through several games of Cards Against Humanity, my morals are
willing to take the back seat if something is legitimately funny enough; with
that said, his sex scene with Amy is pretty damn funny. I guess it also helps
that Cena’s character is one of the few that has a proper head on their
shoulders when it comes to knowing how relationships between the genders work
nowadays, something also rather amazingly illustrated through Amy’s connection
to her father. The whole 'even arseholes turn into top blokes after death'
angle is poked at and shown as being kind of true, which makes sense
considering how as much we may say otherwise in polite company, there is
something kind of funny in the blatantly offensive. Must be the reason why I
find this film as funny as I do in the first place.
This is easily one of the most organic feeling
comedies I’ve seen in a long while, with full credit to director Judd Apatow
for his improv-heavy actor direction that made for some great moments, editor
William Kerr for accomplishing Stylistic Suck by leaving mistakes in that made
Schumer’s writing feel that much realer (also, seeing the actors corpsing
on-screen was funny too) and Schumer herself for some damn good rom-com
deconstruction that actually worked for the most part. Also, bonus film buff
points for bringing out Matthew Broderick and Tim Meadows from Dude knows what
hole for some smaller roles, and Tilda Swinton in yet another unrecognisable
portrayal as Amy’s astoundingly vile boss.
