Funny Fiesta? Ehhh... ''Snatched'' Is Kinda Low on Laughs.

Blondies Emily (Amy Schumer) and Linda (Goldie Hawn) look on the bright side.

Snatched Is More Forgettable Than Funny.

I’m always up for a female-comedian helmed movie. The direction of Snatched as mother-daughter slapstick adventure cranks that up a notch further. This opened in theatres the Friday before Mother’s Day and was marketed at that angle, as a kind of mother/daughter bonding sesh. I planned on surprising my own mom with tickets for this but a traveling delay kept it from happening. So, I saw this on Monday with my best friend Lily instead. I'm glad I saw this with her, because peeps, Snatched is definitely not mother-daughter material. Really it isn’t especially good comedy material either. Gahhh.

Emily Middleton (Amy Schumer) is a hard-drinking, hard-partying, thirty-something city girl. In the opening Emily loses her retail job AND gets dumped by her dick musician boyfriend Michael (Randall Park), throwing her plans for a romantic South American vacay up in flames. The situation? Emily’s stuck with two nonrefundable tickets to Ecuador. She takes to social media, frantically trying to find a friend to go along with her but finds out that her self-absorbed personality isn’t so endearing after all, and no one takes the offer. As a last ditch effort Emily busts in her mom Linda’s (Goldie Hawn) house and asks….errr...well, actually, pleads for mom to come along tossing a line at her to come along to put the “fun” in “nonrefundable.” Linda is a carpet-slipper wearing, safety conscious, cat-loving, homebody. A divorcee, she lives alone and is always on top of her son Jeffrey’s (Ike Barinholtz) and daughter Emily’s goings on. After seeing a photo album of her mom’s thrill-seeker days, Emily knows that this can be the trip of a lifetime for her mom and just the thing to get her out of the house and back onto the social scene. But mostly, Emily still wants to go to South America to party. Just not alone. Because, again, nonrefundable.

The calm before the kidnap in James' (Tom Bateman) Jeep.

Once on Ecuadorian soil this South American getaway quickly goes south.  It doesn’t take long for Emily’s day-drinking ways, reckless partying in forest raves,  and her inability to read ANY red flags to land her (and her mom!) in a whole mess of trouble.

Like, abducted by human traffickers, trouble.

The first man that lures her away is a handsome Brit named James (Tom Bateman). Playing up the angle of a smouldering world traveler type dude, this hottie is definitely in cahoots with shady people but Emily only has eyes for hooking up with him. In an especially raunchy scene she washes her “soupy” smelling vagina in the sink of a public ladies room at a bar, splashing water onto her own snatch, because she’s vying to get some from James before heading back to the hotel to share a queen-sized bed with her mom, Linda. Raunchy humor reigns in Snatched. Boobs hang out, tits and pussys slurs are tossed around A LOT. And, the baddest of the bunch is a gross tapeworm scene later on in Snatched where villagers try to lure a parasite out of Emily’s mouth by dangling a hunk of raw meat over her mouth. You see EVERYTHING. And I mean everything.

Snatched is darker than I first though and as far as a comedy goes, it’s not hilarious. Sure it has funny moments. But it’s still not exactly a success because the teaser trailers give away some of the funniest moments. This cinema sin smacks down the enjoyment value of Snatched. It’s kinda hard work to crack up at a bit you’ve seen aired over and over and over!

Hiking around Colombian forests is a real scream!!!  

What Snatched tries to be is dramatic and scary, but also a great big laugh. The tone at times leans more towards serious, but then we get scenes with a humorous slant that make everything feel like a big, absurd, joke. Especially with the antagonist, Morgado (Óscar Jaenada) and his underlings: half a dozen Colombian and Ecuadorian traffickers. This diabolical Latino with sleek hair, a heavy accent and an enormous sporty/gangster wardrobe is not just campy, he’s also not threatening or scary AT ALL. The running gag of how he constantly thwarts Emily’s and Linda’s attempted escapes feels ridiculous and juvenile. Snatched is loaded with plot gimmicks that really drag the movie down. It’s one huge, contrived fiasco that is, in a word: Deus Ex Machina.

Thumbs down too, to the costumes, makeup and designs of the characters in Snatched. They are not super realistic and makes it hard to take this seriously. While I was watching this with my BFF she turned to me halfway through and asked why Emily and Linda weren’t dirtier, more sunburned, more bug-bitten, or battered by falling, jumping, climbing and trekking through the wild. I mean geeze! They’ve been roaming through a sweltering South American jungle. And while they don’t exactly look like cover girls dumped out of the pages of a glossy magazine, they also don’t look like abducted women fleeing for their lives. It’s hard to believe that anything is really, ultimately, at stake. Ack.  

Girl BAWSES: Barb (Cusack), Emily, and Ruth (Sykes)

Even though Snatched is largely misses and sloppy, it also has moments with big hits. Goldie Hawn’s performance as Linda is charming and genuine.The writers shrug away from laying on a sappy, sticky sweet approach to Emily’s and Linda’s bond. Instead, the dynamic between the two women is oftentimes charged with frustration, exasperation and sometimes even embarrassment. But underneath that, there’s a love between them that seems real and even familiar. The chemistry between these two actresses is believable, it’s no stretch to imagine them as truly mother and daughter.

The several supporting characters are AWESOME as well. Jeffrey is a forty-something agoraphobic piano teacher and Emily’s loser older brother. Played by Ike Barinholtz, Jeffrey is as pesty and dorky as his character nurse Morgan Tookers in Hulu’s The Mindy Project. But a touch more neurotic and a heck of a lot more take-charge. His endless stream of increasingly panicked phone calls to the US embassy and his banter with one of the agents, Russell (Bashir Salahuddin) are brilliantly funny.

Two fellow vacationers at the resort Emily and Linda stay in are one of the absolute highlights. Their scenes alone make watching Snatched - preferably on DVD so you can fastforward to all the best parts- worth it. Ruth (Wanda Sykes) and her special-op BFF bad ass Barb (Joan Cusack) are total scene-stealers. Cusack’s blend of comedic timing, facial expressions and body language is OFF THE CHARTS hilarious. Along with her recent role as Justice Strauss in Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events Cusack continues to show she’s a real force of nature to look out for in comedy. She charges Barb with a quiet fury that comes through in her crazy eyes and stern set jaw. Watching her scale chain-link fences, hop balconies, and roll off of truck cabs is the stuff of a good spy movie. It takes an exceptional actress to be this fierce, voiceless character (this BAMF cut her own tongue out!) who’s both terror AND laughter inducing, and she nails it.

GYAAAHHHH.

It’s also worth mentioning, that Amy Schumer’s plus size isn’t used as a punch line, which is a nice change. Refreshingly, Snatched doesn’t go down that road. And for that I have to give this movie more kudos. Schumer’s full figured, fleshy body isn’t heckled. When she wears her bikini poolside, she’s a model of body positivity. If only the shaky plot, contradictory and uneven tone, and the tug-of-war between comedy and drama/thriller weren’t so prominent Snatched could’ve grabbed more viewers and more laughs. As it stands, this mother/daughter dram/com is more forgettable than funny.

images from imdb