Film Review Katie Walsh
The promising young writer Katie Dippold, who wrote The Heat and Ghostbusters, strikes out with her third feature, Snatched. This mother-daughter kidnapping comedy starring Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn is a huge disappointment, and for Schumer, this is a low moment of a career that has been peaking. As Emily, Schumer plays her characteristic problematic white girl character, a selfish, selfie-taking narcissist. But theres no sharp satire to puncture that image, as some of the best work from her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer has managed to pull off.
Instead, Snatched feels like a rough sketch of a movie rather than a fleshed-out, joke-dense script. Perhaps its a bad match of writer and star, with Schumer and Dippold working together for the first time. The story follows Emily, in the wake of a bad breakup, as she brings her mom, Linda, on a nonrefundable vacation to Ecuador, for lack of a better option (all of her friends seem to hate her). Put the fun back in nonrefundable, she whines to Linda, and one cant help but wonder how an audience member might want to do the same.
On their second day in Ecuador, Emily manages to get herself and her mom kidnapped while trying to impress an attractive Brit, James (Tom Bateman). The two hapless blondes set off on an unlikely journey while trying to escape their captors, and along the way, learn a little something about themselves. The story has about as much suspense as it does laughs, which is to say: not much at all.
The script cant decide whether were supposed to like Emily or hate her shes a bad person who treats her loved ones poorly, and leans on her perceived stupidity and naivete to make her way in the world. The film eventually abandons that thread, steering into girl-power territory and resolving the story with the message that women can rely on themselves, because men are usually either useless or evil.
That wavering is an issue with other aspects of the comedy, too; theres one gross-out scene that feels out of place and cut too short to truly have impact. Directed by Jonathan Levine, Snatched lacks energy and punch. Scenes lag and go on way too long, the scene transitions are awkward and jarring. The entire thing feels like an outline of a movie, half-baked ideas that are never fully formed.
From the premise, it seems as if Snatched might end up horribly racist. It does rely heavily on some really stale Latino stereotypes, and trots out a truly awful joke about what the word welcome might sound like with an accent. This is representative of the comedy in this film, which will make you say, huh, in recognition, rather than actually, you know, laugh.
More often than not, the movie paints white women in a bad light as shallow, man-obsessed dolts who only care about performing their lives for social media. Whats offensive about Snatched is the dreadfully tired conceit its based on, that these women are self-obsessed creatures who believe themselves to be in constant danger of kidnapping, rape or human trafficking from foreigners. Theres no way to freshen up a concept that feels about a century old, even with a cheap sheen of female empowerment.
Walsh writes for Tribune News Service.
SNATCHED 1.5 out of 4 stars Rating: R for crude sexual content, brief nudity, and language throughout. Cast: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack, Tom Bateman Director: Jonathan Levine Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes