Review of Snatched (2017) by Patrick L — 01 Jun 2017

"This mother-daughter vacation gone wrong comedy never goes anywhere".

Movie Review: Snatched.

Date Viewed: May 16 2017.

Directed By Jonathan Levine (Warm Bodies, The Wackness, The Night Before and 50/50).

Written By Katie Dippold.

Starring: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack, Tom Bateman, Christopher Meloni, Oscar Jaenada and Randall Park.

"Snatched" is one of those adventure comedies that feels dated and not very complicit. Amy Schumer is an appealing and hilarious actress but she and Goldie Hawn (who is in her first movie role in 15 years) are no match for a hopeless tame script that mostly relies on raunchy humor just to stay afloat. It's nice to have Goldie Hawn back on the big screen after a long absence but couldn't she have picked something better than "Snatched"?

The movie was written by Katie Dippold who wrote "The Heat" and last year's "Ghostbusters" reboot and she also co-produced "Spy". Obviously she has experience in the female-powered comedy department but her screenplay which was inspired by her own relationship with her mother is completely aggressive, overbearing and cartoonish. "Snatched" follows a blonde 30-ish woman named Emily Middleton (Schumer), she just got fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend (Randall Park). Emily tries to reel in the pain from her bad day by taking a trip to Ecuador with someone she knows. Unfortunately, none of her friends are interested in going and the tickets are non-refundable. Her only option now is her overly cautious, cat-loving mother, Linda Middleton (Hawn).

Emily convinces her mother to go but she refuses at first because Linda is always cautious about everything. Eventually Linda does agree to go and they're off to Ecuador where Emily hopes to have a great trip. During her trip to paradise, Emily meets a dashing British man named James (Tom Bateman) at a bar and they spend a crazy wild night together. When Emily's new flame drives her and her mother into the jungle, their car crashes into an on-coming vehicle and Emily and Linda get kidnapped by Colombian drug mules.

Emily and Linda do manage to escape but they find themselves lost in the jungles of Colombia. Back home in the U.S., Emily's stay-at-home, agoraphobic brother, Jeffrey (Ike Barinholtz) calls the government and he demands immediate action to rescue his mother and sister. Also stuck in the mix are Wanda Sykes as a butch traveler, Joan Cusack (in a silent role) as her mute friend and Christopher Meloni as an Indiana Jones type adventurer. Meloni brings some cuteness and originality to his role and he's the only compelling character in the movie while Sykes and Cusack are underused.

"Snatched" was directed by Jonathan Levine who made the zombie-romance "Warm Bodies", the cancer-comedy "50/50" and the raunchy Seth Rogen Christmas vehicle "The Night Before". Levine's direction seemed to be absent from "Snatched" because this mother-daughter vacation gone wrong comedy never goes anywhere. Hawn doesn't give her finest work here and Schumer is just doing a Xerox copy of her oversexed, 30-something character she played so brilliantly in "Trainwreck".

I laughed seven times throughout but that doesn't excuse "Snatched" for being scattershot and too unfocused. It may have a pair of talented comic actresses but the screenplay fails to do them any service.