Snatched Review

Snatched
Starring: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack
Directed by: Jonathan Levine
Written by: Katie Dippold

As someone who’s not really a fan of Amy Schumer, I have to admit that I was dreading the 91 mins I committed to sitting down in the theatre to watch Snatched. I didn’t watch any trailers for the film beforehand and went into the film blind, knowing only that it starred Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer and involved the two of them being kidnapped, which is honestly all anyone needs to know, really.

According to IMDb, the plot of the film is this: When her boyfriend dumps her before their exotic vacation, a young woman persuades her ultra-cautious mother to travel with her to paradise, with unexpected results. The so-called “unexpected results” involve Emily and Linda being snatched (oh my god, that’s the title of the film!) and running around South America as they try to escape from the ruthless men who are in pursuit.

The whole thing is meant to sort of be a funny sort of Eat, Love, Pray type film infused with something along the lines of Bridesmaids, complete with raunchy humour that formerly seemed to be reserved solely for men. You can definitely see what they were going for with Snatched but the problem is that I’m not sure they were entirely successful.

There are definitely genuinely funny moments within the film but a lot of the overall quality of the story gets lost along the way as the setups that get built up continually don’t pay off. There are so many missed opportunities with the story and without spoiling anything, I was disappointed that they didn’t go anywhere. That could have been due to scenes being cut from the final film, but I think they ultimately needed to be included to give the ending a little more of a satisfactory closing and a few final chuckles.

Schumer is the weakest part of the entire film for me. Hawn isn’t at her best either, but I felt like she played the role that she was given very well and she looked fantastic.

Honestly, I would’ve loved to have seen Hawn pair up with her actual daughter, Kate Hudson (who just HAPPENS to be an actress), for the film… I would’ve paid to see how their real life chemistry played out with fictional characters but in place of Hudson, I would’ve taken pretty much anyone else.

Schumer does a good job of playing the asshole white girl but somewhere along the way, there’s meant to be some sort of redemption for her character and I never feel like that pays off, going back to what I was saying before although this is only one of a few things. Even once the redemption story hits, I feel like the transformation is a mask that she’s wearing and that mask is a real cheap one from Party City where you can still see that someone else is underneath.

Verdict:
See it. Honestly, I didn’t hate this movie and while I don’t think that I would necessarily recommend seeing it specifically in theatres, it’s a fun film to watch with some girlfriends at home when it inevitably winds up on Netflix.

The film isn’t bad but it’s not exactly good either. It’s a solid passable movie that I enjoyed while I was watching it, but could have definitely been better.