Laughs often go missing in kidnap caper
Snatched
(out of 4) Starring Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack and Oscar Jaenada. Directed by Jonathan Levine. Opens Friday at major theatres. 90 minutes. 14A Imagine the Hollywood pitch meeting where adventure comedy Snatched got the green light. Filmmaker: “Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn, together at last! Two generations, two funny ladies! Goldie is ending her 15-year screen retirement for this!”
Studio suit: “But the script has them being kidnapped for ransom money in South America by very bad hombres! This actually happens to people! It’s not funny!”
Filmmaker: “We’ll surround them with wacky actors like Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack and Ike Barinholtz of The Mindy Project! It’ll be great!”
Whether or not something like this actually occurred, Snatched is what we get. It follows the above template, except for the bit about being great, which it most certainly isn’t.
The movie earns a few chuckles, but humour is largely held hostage by a lewd and lazy screenplay that wanders like Billy in The Family Circus.
Evidently the studio felt worried enough about Snatched that the decision was made to summarize the plot in a few lines of text right off the top, so people don’t think anything really bad will occur in the next 90 minutes.
We’re left guessing the thoughts of director Jonathan Levine ( 50/50, The Wackness) and screenwriter Katie Dippold ( Spy, The Heat), because there’s no discernible method to their madness.
Schumer is Emily, a naïve slacker who finds herself unattached, having been fired from her dead-end job and dumped by her jerk of a boyfriend.
Problem: Emily and the jerk were about to go on vacation together to South America. The tickets are nonrefundable.
Solution: Travel with mom! Even though mom Linda (Hawn) is a homebody cat lady who considers foreign travel a ticket to trouble. She’s almost as anti-social as Emily’s pampered agoraphobic brother Jeffrey (Barinholtz).
After the usual bluster — “You don’t do anything fun anymore!” — Emily and Linda find themselves sipping drinks and squabbling at a resort in Ecuador. They meet a zany pair of fellow travellers, played by Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack, who are actually pretty funny together.
Emily and Linda also encounter the aforementioned bad hombres, led by the creepy Morgado (Oscar Jaenada), who considers them easy prey for a ransom scam. (Hasn’t he ever seen a Hollywood comedy?)
Hijinks ensue, cautiously. Emily and Linda actually are in peril, from dangerous dudes and the encroaching jungle. Some blood is spilled.
The abrupt manner in which characters come and go suggests a lot of effort and editing was expended to keep Snatched from getting too grim. And the two leads aren’t exactly a comedy match made in heaven.
Schumer does her usual bawdy clowning, including a gross-out scene with a giant tapeworm. Hawn, who knows she’s been in way better movies, Private Benjamin among them, mostly remains in stern “I told you so” mode. Needless to say, Snatched isn’t going to win any cul- tural sensitivity or tourism awards from South America.
But it also makes North Americans look bad, especially employees of the U.S. State Department, who couldn’t care less about the plight of kidnapped Emily and Linda. “Trust no one, good luck!” says one.
Snatched isn’t very funny, but at least it’s broad-minded about its boorishness.