Snatched Review

R:  Crude Sexual Content, Brief Nudity, and Language Throughout

20th Century Fox, Chernin Entertainment, TSG Entertainment

1 Hr and 37 Minutes

Cast: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Joan Cusack, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes, Christopher Meloni

REVIEW: If you’re my friend and you know me, you know that I love Amy Schumer. A lot of my friends really hate her, but I think she’s one of the coolest women working in the entertainment business today. I owned her Book The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo and thoroughly read through it. There was also that time when I bought my friends to the 10 Cloverfield Lane premiere and we were surprised by Schumer introducing the movie instead of someone attached to the film. Whereas my friends screamed, “NO,” I screamed, “YES!” Though Trainwreck was one of my favorite comedies of 2015, I was looking forward to the next big screen project Schumer was going to do next. Until I saw the trailer for this. As much as I am a fan of Schumer, the trailers never sold me. I never got a laugh or chuckle while watching them. I just brushed it off as another obligatory R-rated Fox comedy like Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates and Why Him? God, please merciful on me and not have this movie suck.

Thankfully it didn’t suck…..as much as I thought it would. 

After her boyfriend dumps her on the eve of their exotic vacation, impetuous dreamer Emily Middleton persuades her ultra-cautious mother, Linda to travel with her to paradise. Polar opposites, Emily and Linda realize that working through their differences as mother and daughter - in unpredictable, hilarious fashion - is the only way to escape the wildly outrageous jungle adventure they have fallen into.

THE GOOD:  We know Amy Schumer is a decent comedic actress, so her performance along with Hawn really carries the movie. Right in the beginning (which starts off like an Inside Amy Schumer sketch), we’re introduced to Emily who is more of a train wreck than Amy in Trainwreck.  She can’t get her job together, she can’t keep her relationship with Randall Park in a wig together, and everything just sucks. One of the funniest aspects of the movie is when Emily goes home to her mother and immediately acts like a needy child especially when her agoraphobic brother (played by Ike Barinholtz) is also around.

Though it been over 15 years since we saw Goldie Hawn in a movie, she gives a really good and warm welcoming performance. Though her character, Linda, a neurotic mom with an odd fascination with cats is written very thin, she’s consistently charming and loveable. Because of this, her dynamic Schumer works as she is a mess herself. They’re not a mother daughter duo that constantly argues or anything for they show how much they care about each other. As the film goes on you see them grow as characters. You genuinely feel for their relationship for them and want them to get out of this situation alive.

One of the best things I can say about this movie is its production value. It doesn’t look like a movie that was made for a vacation check such as a lot of Adam Sandler flicks. It has decent lighting and cinematography to make it look like an actual movie. Though the editing is poor, it still manages to have a theatrical feel to it. It's a thing that I appreciate about Jonathan Levine’s direction. From his other films such as 50/50, The Night Before, and this, the movie flourishes in its theatricality as it goes on. 

 A lot of the film’s best surprises of the movie comes from the side characters. Halfway through the film introduces Christopher Meloni who acts like an Indiana Jones type character and he’s just lively and happy as hell. He’s not that funny and though he’s there for 5 minutes, he’s a brief ball of joy. It's honestly great to see him out of the Law and Order office for once.  He’s like Fozzie Bear where he tries to be funny and ultimately fails at it but is still lovable at the end of the day.

Besides him, the other characters that steal the show are Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack. Though they’re weirdly introduced, their characters, Ruth and Barb are hysterical every time they’re onscreen. They’re those characters you kind of want a spin-off from. Ruth is just Wanda Sykes being herself and Joan Cusack is Charlie Chaplin if he was an ex-operative. You don't receive a lot of laughs from them but when you do, they are hilarious.

THE BAD: I’m not going to lie, but a lot of the majority of the jokes don’t work and the most of it is due to my #1 trite I have with comedies: ad-libbing. This film was initially written by Katie Dippold but then was rewritten by Amy and her sister Kim. None of them are bad writers, but when you rework a script that doesn’t mesh well together, the film will obviously suffer from it. Due to the amount of ad-libbing, there’s a lot of tumbleweed moments in the movie and the very one-note story doesn't help either.  

Some jokes don’t follow an elaborate setup for they just come out as punchlines and one-liners. It's one of those comedies that goes joke after joke after joke with no sense of stopping. You just see it constantly throw darts at a wall to see what sticks. It's sad because a good 40-60 of the jokes work. When it aims for big laughs, a good 70% of them on the other hand, works.

Though these characters are written very thin, they're not as terribly written as characters from earlier R-rated Fox comedies.  These characters never come such as close to be obnoxious as anyone in Why Him? or Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates. This isn’t one of those raunchy comedies that are made just for the sake of shock value. The movie is never obnoxious or in your face as those order said films. The only raunchy joke that's there is just a shot of Schumer’s boob and that is pretty much it. This may be a scattershot comedy, but it's not an annoying one as it's rather a passably enjoyable one. If you are taking your mom to see this for Mothers Day, you won't leave with much regret.

LAST STATEMENT: Though it suffers from sporadic humor with a thinly written script and benefits from a theatrically looking production, the chemistry between the two charming leads makes Snatched a somewhat passable Mothers Day comedy diversion.   

Rating: 2.5/5 | 51%

Super Scene: Ruth, Emily, and Barb gears up to get Linda