Snatched
Directed by: Jonathan Levine
Written by: Katie Dippold
Starring: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Tom Bateman, Christopher Meloni, Oscar Jaenada, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack, Bashir Salahuddin, Randall Park, Arturo Castro, Al Madrigal
Action/Comedy - 90 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 10 May 2017
Written by: Katie Dippold
Starring: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Tom Bateman, Christopher Meloni, Oscar Jaenada, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack, Bashir Salahuddin, Randall Park, Arturo Castro, Al Madrigal
Action/Comedy - 90 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 10 May 2017
Emily Middleton (Amy Schumer, Trainwreck) is one of those comedy protagonists you would never raise your hand to go on a long trip with. She is 2017’s Del Griffith. At least that John Candy Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) character walked away with our empathy and some respect at the end of his arc. Emily generated a wrinkled brow and a half sneer from me early on and the creases only got deeper by the end. Director Jonathan Levine’s slide away from his earlier spark continues with Snatched, a fish-out-of-water action-comedy aimed squarely at mother/daughter duos this Mother’s Day weekend. The studio will cross their fingers audiences do not fully realize what an awful character Emily is and how few and far between the laughs are as Emily and her mother, Linda (Goldie Hawn), bumble and bicker across a chunk of South America.
Emily did not invite her mother on vacation to break her out of her cloistered and unhealthy cat dependencies; in other words, it wasn’t to help. It is an example of Emily’s selfish motivations. She’s terrified of going alone because she might have to spend some extensive alone time with herself; probably a person she doesn’t want to hang out with either. Linda would love to re-connect with her daughter, but her suspicions are confirmed when Emily oozes through the door plastered, raving about some guy she just met, verbally abuses her mom for being wary in an unfamiliar environment, and then caps off the sequence by farting directly on her mother. Welcome back Goldie Hawn.
Emily did not invite her mother on vacation to break her out of her cloistered and unhealthy cat dependencies; in other words, it wasn’t to help. It is an example of Emily’s selfish motivations. She’s terrified of going alone because she might have to spend some extensive alone time with herself; probably a person she doesn’t want to hang out with either. Linda would love to re-connect with her daughter, but her suspicions are confirmed when Emily oozes through the door plastered, raving about some guy she just met, verbally abuses her mom for being wary in an unfamiliar environment, and then caps off the sequence by farting directly on her mother. Welcome back Goldie Hawn.
Hawn defined her film career by playing the out of her comfort zone, wrong place at the wrong time gal. Think back to Private Benjamin (1980), Wildcats (1986), and Overboard (1987), three of her most enduring films. Hawn’s character is not supposed to be there; she’s been misplaced be it in the Army, as a football coach, or a millionairess with amnesia performing domestic housework in rural Oregon. We haven’t seen Goldie Hawn on the big scene since The Banger Sisters (2002), but falling back into habit, Linda is misplaced and kidnapped in South America fumbling around the Amazon with a daughter as charming as Willy Wonka’s Veruca Salt.
Writer Katie Dippold, riding a string of scripts from The Heat (2013) to last year’s lightning rod of controversy Ghostbusters remake, pens another female-driven comedy including a rare role for an actress over 70. While Hollywood earns its share of shame for neglecting comediennes of a certain age, Snatched is not a vehicle to use as an example for more of them. It reminded me of the God-awful Tammy (2014) starring a similar mother/daughter pair with Susan Sarandon and Melissa McCarthy. If this is how scripts want to treat Sarandon and Hawn, then no wonder executives are loathe to take the risk on shabby stories.
I’m tearing Snatched apart not so much because it is an opportunity lost, but because it's lazy and off-putting. I’m not sure Schumer and Hawn were ever going to launch a film into the stratosphere. However, Wanda Sykes (Bad Moms) shows up in a minor role along with a mute Joan Cusack (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) in a barely there role. It’s anybody’s guess if a screen time increase for the duo would aid the humor and flow, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt. Mr. Law and Order: SVU himself, Christopher Meloni (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For), shows up as a great Amazon pretender and what happens to him is one of Snatched’s few surprises. There is also a tape worm scene which will lean you forward in your seat laughing and the joke which brings the house down when a mortified Emily gets caught cleaning a sensitive area by the rugged heartthrob.
Put it all together and compare it to the film everyone is thinking about and Snatched is no Trainwreck. Twentieth Century Fox drops Snatched into theaters to exploit those mother/daughter pairs looking for their own fare while their husbands and sons run to Marvel superheroes. I hope the ladies are looking forward to laughing at the endless amount of jokes said directly to Emily explaining how ugly and fat she is. The moms will be excited to see Goldie Hawn again but will be the most disappointed of all when they realize Hawn is merely a reaction presence and hardly gets any one-liners to herself. This Jonathan Levine misfire is even more disappointing since his earlier 50/50 (2011) and Warm Bodies (2013) fooled us into thinking here was a guy with the soul and skill to elevate even silly teenage zombie movies. The so-so Christmas comedy The Night Before (2015) and Snatched do more to say Levine got lucky his first few times behind the camera and this is his average plateau. Here’s hoping Goldie Hawn opts to stick around again searching for the most elusive of scripts rather than abandoning us for another 15 years.
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