Summary
3 tech score
“Snatched” (20th Century Fox)
Have you seen all the trailers for the Goldie Hawn/Amy Schumer comedy “Snatched”? Have you caught all those appearances by these two actresses promoting this movie like it is the best thing either of them has ever done? Are you excited that it is finally at your local cinema and you are in your car driving there to have a great two hours of entertainment? Well stop right there and turn that car around because “Snatched “ will go down as one of the big, and I mean BIG disappointments of the year.
Amy Schumer is talented; Goldie Hawn is talented. The combination of these two in a mother/daughter story should be box office gold. But all that glitters is not Goldie, or at least not Goldie Hawn at her best. In this movie her talent is wasted, and if you had not seen her in other movie made early on in her career you would think she has no talent. She has not made a movie in fifteen years and when the stink settles on this fiasco she will probably never work again.
I blame it all on Amy Schumer. She is the who reportedly coaxed Hawn out of semi-retirement to make this mess. Does she not understand Goldie Hawn is a national treasure. You can’t just throw her against the wall and expect her talent to make comedy stick to it. She needs a script that has some funny moments in it, and then Goldie can work her charm and add her special snap to it. But the script to “Snatched” is flat as a flitter and dull as dishwater.
The premise of the plot is that Emily (Schumer) has been planing a romantic adventure in Ecuador with her boyfriend (Randall Park). He drops her before the trip ever begins and the cost of the trip is nonrefundable. The only person she can find who will go with her is her mother Linda (Hawn). Once there they are abducted and have to fight their way out of the jungle. Along the way they kill a couple of people.
None of this is funny. Not Schumer, not Hawn, not even Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack who are dragged into this mess. Sykes and Cusack’s characters have some potential but just as you are warming up to them they disappear from the story. The same thing happens with Park and Christopher Meloni, who plays a bizarre jungle guide. Instead we are stuck with too much screen time for Ike Barinholtz who plays Schumer’s agoraphobic brother .
The movie is rated for profanity, violence and nudity.
In addition to having a poor script the movie also suffers from poor editing. Scenes just seem to end with no consideration for continuity of story. Plus the camerawork is sloppy. Hawaii stands in for Ecuador and Colombia which matches the other fakeness of the film.
If you are thinking about going to see “Snatched”, don’t. Go get a copy of “Private Benjamin,””Overboard” or even “The First Wives Club”. Those are golden Goldie movies. This one is not worth her time or talent.
I scored “Snatched” a keep them 3 out of 10.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
