Towards the end of Amy Schumer’s Leather Special, I found myself questioning not only ‘what it is that makes a good comic’, but also if I would ever laugh again.
Listen: Mia Freedman unpacks Amy Schumer’s latest comedy special with Jessie Stephens and Monique Bowley, Mamamia Out Loud.
Don’t get me wrong. Schumer’s ethos is great….
She is a woman for women; a voice of reality and honesty in a post-porn world otherwise filled with filtered Instagram feeds and undiagnosed body image issues.
I suppose you could say being ‘real’ is her thing. Much the same as ‘saving people’ is Spiderman’s.
But her latest special felt nothing like the raw, real Schumer we’ve come to love. Nothing like the gritty truthful comedy for which she’s become so well known.
Instead?
It felt dumb; contrived; easy.
Read: Mia Freedman shares her opinion on Amy Schumer’s ill-received Leather Special.
In my (largely irrelevant) opinion, snaffling up the title Trainwreck for her far more successful film seems… well, it seems somewhat ironic.
In term’s of her reputation – as a comic, as a feminist, as a voice of truth – her Leather Special was everything I hoped it wouldn’t be. It was self-degrading. Smutty. Sad.