A 2015 British romantic comedy by Ben Palmer tells about a 34-year-old woman Nancy (played by Lake Bell), who is “exhausted by the endless fruitless set ups by her friends” (Prongs par. 1), pulling the plug on this side of her life long ago. While her friends get married and have a happy family life, Nancy has yet to build her personal happiness and feels like she is done with dating. But it all changes when Nancy finds herself in the wrong place at the right time; at the Waterloo, she runs in with “a 40-year-old divorcee, Jack (played by Simon Pegg), who mistakes her for his 24-year-old blind date” (Prongs par. 1).
He does not at all fit her idea of a potential boyfriend, let alone a possible groom. Nevertheless, their acquaintance gets a sequel. During a crazy date, they have lovely time together. Suddenly, they find out that Nancy is not the girl that Jack was to meet, and they have a big quarrel. Jack wants to a girl with whom he originally had an appointment. Having found her, he comes to the conclusion that he misses Nancy. Man Up proves that we cannot foresee or envisage our life and it sometimes better to go with the flow.
In Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck we follow a party girl Amy, who “drinks too much, smokes weed and sleeps around while dating a gym-addict named Steven” (Sultan par. 3). When Amy Townsend’s father divorced his wife, he convinced his young daughters that monogamy was madness and that there was nothing better than a casual relationship with strangers. Amy (Amy Schumer) put that in a pipe and smoked it (literally).
She has trouble understanding her sister Kim, who had rebelled against their father and got married to a man with a child. Instead, Amy lives by her father’s credo – “enjoying what she feels is an uninhibited life free from stifling, boring romantic commitment” (Prongs par. 1). Working for a men’s magazine she gets an assignment from her boss (played by Tilda Swinton) to write an article about a sports physician Aaron. The interview ends up in bed, and Amy believes that this is the last time she sees Aaron. However, much to the consternation of the lead character, the doctor asks her out. After a while, Amy Townsend wraps her mind around the idea that she has fallen in love, though it was not part of her plans.
Both movie pictures tell about women with firm views and ground rules, which they have yet to contravene. The heroines are strikingly different; Nancy from Man Up is a shy self-destructive girl who keeps boo-hooing herself for being single, while Trainwreck’s Amy is a commitment-phobic unbuttoned magazine journalist who is quite contended with her life. But they both share a confidence that they will never find a true love. Ironically, they both end up in serious relationships.
According to Mike D’Angelo, both romantic comedies make an attempt at reversing gender stereotypes, albeit Man Up does it less clumsily than Apatow’sTrainwreck (D’Angelo par. 1). “Here, it’s Jack who’s prone to public crying jags yet undeterred from seeking happiness, and it’s Nancy who’s retreated from the world”, while in Trainwreck, Aaron is a thoughtful guy who leads a quiet life “given over to medicine” and Amy is his complete opposite, a hard-drinking party girl.
According to Tom Bond, both comedies feature strong women who end up with the man, sacrificing their principles (Bond par. 18). But what if those principles are not worth a dime when they make them unhappy? The moral of Man Up and Trainwreck is precisely this; there are some principles that we should sacrifice for the sake of our happiness.
Works Cited
Bond, Tom. “Behind The Scenes of Man Up with Screenwriter Tess Morris.” Candid Magazine. Candid Publications Ltd. 2015. Web.
D’Angelo, Mike. “Man Up only scores when Simon Pegg and Lake Bell rip into each other.” A.V. Club. Onion Inc. . 2015. Web.
Prongs, Samuel. “Man Up. Plot Summary.” IMDb. Inc., n.d. Web.
Sultan, Ahmed. “Trainwreck.” Ceylon Today. n.d. Web.