Comics flounder in the jungle
AS a mother-daughter adventure caper, Snatched manages to be both terribly old-fashioned and edgily contemporary with two Jewish stars in the lead – comic Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn.
AS a mother-daughter adventure caper, Snatched manages to be both terribly old-fashioned and edgily contemporary.
With two Jewish stars in the lead – comic Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn as her mother – Snatched is worth a look, but don’t set your expectations too high.
Snatched comes with a great comic pedigree. Teaming Schumer with Hawn, one of the best American comic actresses of her generation (Private Benjamin, Shampoo, Housesitter and The First Wives Club), is a casting coup and marks her first film role in 15 years since 2002’s The Banger Sisters.
For Schumer, it is a follow-up to her surprise hit Trainwreck.
Co-producer Paul Feig, who has made a career of female-centred action comedies including last year’s Ghostbusters, The Heat, Bridesmaids and Spy, ensures there is the requisite mix of bawdy humour and action.
Add to the mix a good sprinkling of lesser-known but equally adept comics: African-American entertainer Wanda Sykes, character actress Joan Cusack and Jewish comic Ike Barinholtz.
The story is set around the Middleton family (dad is long gone). Emily (Schumer) is a twenty- something drifting through life, while her brother Jeffrey (Barinholtz) suffers from severe agoraphobia and a host of other anxiety disorders, while their mother Linda (Hawn) has taken anxiety to a high art.
Fired from her job and recently broken-up with her boyfriend, Emily invites her mother to accompany her on her planned trip to Ecuador. It’s a last resort: no one else wants to go with her.
The trip seems idyllic, especially as Emily meets a handsome stranger, Brit (Tom Bateman), who takes them on an adventure to the jungle … and leads them to getting kidnapped by a nasty Latin gang (a throwback of stereotyped screen bad guys).
They escape, only to be captured again, and get help from odd characters (including Sykes and a mute Cusack) as they race through the jungle.
Somehow it all seems good fun, an odd mixture of personal peril that does not quite seem real. They call on Jeffrey for help, who rises to the occasion and contacts the American State Department, which appears only mildly interested in their predicament.
This is a film for the Bridesmaids fans, although director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) never quite pulls it off.
It’s one thing to soil a wedding dress, but quite another for two women to be chained in a jungle hideout; the setting seems not quite as funny, even if the characters are.
The Middletons seem like a wholesome middle American family, but the strong strains of family anxiety feel like a particularly
Jewish characteristic presented by three accomplished Jewish comic actors.
The filmmakers skipped the opportunity of making the characters Jewish, which would have given us lots more to laugh about.
Snatched is currently screening.
DON PERLGUT
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