Why I'm still so torn about the new movie 'Trainwreck'

I'm very torn about Trainwreck, a movie I found very funny but also profoundly problematic.

Basically it has all the flaws and hallmarks of most Judd Apatow movies, but it's elevated substantially by a star-making performance from Amy Schumer.

Her strength as a comedian is her defiant stance, her willingness to unapologetically be herself for better or worse.

The character she plays in Trainwreck, at least at first, possesses that same quality and it's both liberating and fun to see a female lead who is allowed to be both debauched and sexually aggressive.

But a funny thing happens at roughly the midway point, her character ends up becoming a much more conventional romantic comedy heroine, and while the movie never stops being engaging, it also winds up reinforcing traditional roles.

I suspect this is largely due to the involvement of Apatow who has always been a conservative filmmaker at heart. His films have consistently hidden under a veneer of raunchy jokes and high-concept premises, but every single one them (including the interesting, but rudderless Funny People) ends up promoting the family unit.

Apatow idealizes marriage and family -- and there's nothing inherently wrong with that -- but I wish he could embrace the reality that what's right for him is not necessarily right for everyone, especially his protagonist in Trainwreck. For instance, in his least affected film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Steve Carrell's character didn't have to fundamentally change who he was to find love, just come out of his shell a little bit. And his romance was the culmination of several decades of pent up desire with a woman who was clearly his equal (the luminous Catherine Keener), so it was more gratifying.

But in many of his subsequent films, including this one, his lead characters stumble towards monogamy as a rite of passage, even if they haven't earned it. Meanwhile, his work has gotten more ambitious but also more self-indulgent.

That said, his films -- even his flawed ones -- do tap into real emotions and real-life challenges, and I do admire that. Trainwreck feels fresher than much of his previous work because of Schumer but her savage instincts are often neutered by Apatow's desire to tame her.

The film is overstuffed and although many of its comedic riffs are uproarious, far too many of the scenes run too long and have no momentum. Most great comedies clock in under two hours for a reason, and Trainwreck -- which is teeming with ideas -- has more than a few scenes that could have gone on the chopping block.

In my opinion, Melissa McCarthy's Spy, the other major female-driven comedy of the summer, is actually the superior film because its timing was impeccable and its plot never got overwhelmed by its jokes. Schumer wrote the screenplay for Trainwreck and it has a stand-up's sensibility, which may account for its "more is more" barrage of one-liners.

And yet I had a great time watching it, and I suspect it will hold up far better than say the overrated Knocked Up. For once, the female character isn't the wet blanket trying to force an inexplicably immature and unattractive man to conform. In this film, Bill Hader makes for a lovable and charming comedic foil for Schumer, and she gets to play a real range of emotions here -- in fact, the strongest portion of the film may be the surprisingly moving dynamics of the lead character's family life.

Trainwreck is by no means a bad film -- but I am curious how it will be received by Schumer's fans and women in general. In some ways, it's an advance. But it also doesn't do enough to revolutionize a genre which has historically sought to put women in "their place."