At a certain point in recent history it seemed like we were about to start living in the “Amy Schumer Era.” She had a hit television show, was exploding on the stand-up circuit and had a massive hit in Trainwreck. The crash down was equally as fast as her rise up. Her Netflix special was received so poorly the company changed their ratings system to blunt the impact. She was accused of joke thievery en masse. And her next big starring vehicle, Snatched, was a disaster with critics and failed to find an audience as counter-programming against Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.
Snatched wound up losing money for any number of reasons but the biggest one is simple: it wasn’t that good.
Simple premise. Schumer and her mother (Goldie Hawn) go on vacation south of the border and wind up being kidnapped. Shenanigans ensue as they jail break for freedom, among other things.
The film’s problem is that it wants to take the style of Trainwreck, which is place Schumer and her comedy style into a world that’s more serious than she is, but doesn’t quite have the comedy chops to really make the film work. This is a film that is set up for a Romancing the Stone/Jewel of the Nile sort of action comedy with the requisite action set up but without any of the comedy chops that made those films endearing. There’s a large feeling you get when watching this that a lot of the comedy was improvised on set and didn’t quite fit the tone of everything else.
Snatched has some genuine moments of hilarity few and far between; it’s just most of it isn’t. Recommendation to avoid.
Nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual suspects like deleted scenes.
20th Century Fox presents Snatched. Directed by Jonathan Levine. Written by Katie Dippold. Starring Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn. Run Time: 91 minutes. Rated R. Released on: 8.8.17
