Trainwreck

Funny woman Amy Schumer effortlessly makes the transition from her successful TV career to being the brightest new star to hit the big screen this year in what is destined to be one of the summer's blockbuster romantic comedies. If that is not enough, she wrote the very hilarious script herself.

Amy plays Amy, a magazine writer for one of those obnoxious self-congratulatory "lads" magazines, who has never forgotten the mantra that her rather sleazy father drummed into her when she was a young girl: "Monogamy is not realistic." So daughter, like father, and with her insatiable sex-drive, adopts a strict love-em-and-leave-em policy. This entails manipulating a never-ceasing line of hot dates into pleasuring her before she ups and disappears, never sleeping over with any of them. The one time she breaks her rule and wakes up in strange bedroom with its walls plastered with football insignia, she begs, "Please don't let this be a dorm room."

One day she is assigned to write a profile on a surgeon who specializes in putting famous athletes together again after they have got injured. It's a tad more serious than the fluffy stuff that she is used to writing about, but she dare not argue with her fearsomely aggressive editor, a master of foul-mouth expletives. (A shockingly wonderful Tilda Swinton fills the role, and she could give any "Real Housewife" a run for their money.)

Amy is determined not to like the surgeon, whose name is Aaron (Bill Hader), but she cannot stop herself. When dinner and drinks follow the interview, she invites herself home to his house afterwards. Not only that; she allows him to persuade her to stay the night, and next morning at her office she is deeply regretting it. It had been the first time that she had ever had sex whilst still sober -- and worse still, she enjoyed it.

Now there is even more role reversal, as Amy cannot understand why she actually wants to see Aaron again. This is an unprecedented feeling for her. Meanwhile, Aaron is being congratulated by his fiends that he has finally met someone after a two-year dry spell. His best friend is LeBron James (playing himself, and surprisingly enough he does a very good job of it). Well, it may not totally be the real James, as it is hard to imagine him as a penny-pinching guy who insists on splitting the restaurant check to the dime before dashing home to watch "Downton Abbey" with his teammates.

Amy has been happy playing the field and enjoying her own bad behavior, but there are secondary plot lines involving her sister, who took an opposite route and married "safely" to a very sensible man, and even took on his precocious son; plus, their father's health is failing, and the siblings have to put in an assisted living home. If this is meant to try to persuade Amy to change her ways and conform before it is too late, it fails. Fear not: After she panics about being swept away by her too-nice-for-words doctor and losing sight of her slutty single days, a breakup is in the offing, but it's followed by a making up very much in Amy's own style.

Schumer simply shines on the screen, and although she is best in the more frenetic mad banter scenes, she proves she can hold her own when it comes to getting all romantic and emotional. She gives a powerhouse performance, which is complemented by a funny, but understated, turn by Bill Hader as the man who may eventually tame her. I am still in something of shock discovering Tilda Swinton's previously-untapped gift for comedy in all her scene-stealing moments.

"Trainwreck" is directed by Judd Apatow, who is considered the master of this genre, but for once it would have better if he hadn't been quite so formulaic in his direction and let Amy's own voice come through more. That said, it is still a gloriously wonderful movie that shows what a total charmer this breath of fresh air really is.