Snatched (2017)
Amy Schumer stars as Emily Middleton, who cajoles her divorced doting mother Linda (Hawn, Everyone Says I Love You) to accompany her on a non-refundable vacation to a posh resort in Ecuador she booked back when she had a job and a significant other to come with her. It’s fun for the ladies at first, with Emily meeting hunky suitor James (Bateman, Murder on the Orient Express) and Linda enjoying the poolside with a good book. Sure enough, as warned not long after arrival, the two tourists end up getting “snatched” — kidnapped — and put up for ransom by a fierce Colombian drug lord. Now it’s up to the helpless mother and daughter to try to figure out a means of escape.
Formulaic and uninspired in plot, it’s not a particularly good film, but it does offer requisite buddy-comedy laughs. How much of them hit you will largely result in how much you ultimately enjoy this comedy. A simple rule of thumb is that fans of Amy Schumer will likely enjoy Snatched most, and those who don’t care for her the least. It’s not as funny or clever as her star-making vehicle, Trainwreck, but it’s a watchable and enjoyable comedy just purely based on garnering infectiously silly, abundantly crude laughs.
Snatched is directed by Jonathan Levine, who helmed the lackluster crude Christmas comedy, The Night Before, and the more successful zombie romantic comedy, Warm Bodies. His 50/50 put him on the map as a talent to watch for its mix of laughs and poignancy. Snatched is much more of a straight-up comedy, with lots of improvised lines over the screenplay by Katie Dippold. who scripted other female starring vehicle comedies for Snatched producer Paul Feig like The Heat and the Ghostbusters remake.
Snatched features a nice supporting cast, with Hawn solid in her first role in many years. Interestingly, the Schumer/Hawn interplay doesn’t yield as much fun as you’d suspect, but they are both individually appealing and funny in their respective roles in the “odd couple” formula. Goldie Hawn is just too cute and likeable to come off as an overbearing nuisance, while Schumer seems much more concerned in delivering funny shtick to shore up the dynamics of the relationship any more than necessary to land the next joke.
Scene-stealing Wanda Sykes (Bad Moms) and her mute sidekick, played by Joan Cusack (Popstar), will have some thinking that a spin-off movie could be fun, should this movie earn enough of a following to justify it. One could say the same about Christopher Meloni as the jungle adventurer who isn’t quite as reliable as these sorts typically are in films. Ike Barinholtz (Suicide Squad) has one or two funny lines as Emily’s nerdy failed-launch brother Jeffrey, but is also involved in some of the worst of the comedic material, and he’s on the screen far too often for such a superfluous character, especially when the laughs fail so often with him on the screen.
Schumer fans, and those who just like raunchy comedies in general, especially one with a female perspective, should find enough here to like to justify the time and money spent. It’s not a must-see comedy by any means, but the laughs are there, and, if scattered, there are just enough of them to make this a fun diversion for those in the mood for some low-grade chuckles, even within an uninspired vacation-nightmare premise.
Qwipster’s rating: B-
MPAA Rated: R for crude sexual content, brief nudity, and language throughout
Running Time: 90 min.
Cast: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Tom Bateman, Christopher Meloni, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack, Oscar Jaenada
Small role: Randall Park
Director: Jonathan Levine
Screenplay: Katie Dippold