Taglines: This is the closest they’ve bmen in years.
Emily Middleton (Amy Schumer) is in a clothing store looking for a nice outfit. She is telling a woman about her upcoming trip to Ecuador with her boyfriend. The woman, who is actually just a customer, cuts Emily off and asks for an item in her size, which they don’t have. Emily’s strict boss Lew (Raven Goodwin) then goes over and criticizes Emily for not working and goofing off too much, leading her to fire Emily.
Emily then meets up with her boyfriend Michael (Randall Park) at a restaurant. As Emily is talking excitedly about their trip, Michael breaks up with her because his band is going on tour and there is more potential for him to meet other women. Emily pitifully tries to spin it around and break up with Michael, but he just leaves her alone as she starts crying.
We meet Emily’s mother Linda (Goldie Hawn), who lives with her cats and agoraphobic son Jeffrey (Ike Barinholtz). Linda catches wind of Emily’s breakup as she posts about it on Facebook. Linda calls Michael a “son of a bitch” on Emily’s wall, which starts an awkward public conversation between mother and daughter.
Emily goes to her mom’s house for comfort. She sits down to have dinner with Linda and Jeffrey, the latter bickering with Emily and getting on Linda’s nerves. Emily tries to find another friend to join her on her trip, but no one will go. Emily then goes into Linda’s closet to look for a shirt and she finds a scrapbook of Linda in her youth going on numerous trips and having the time of her life. Impressed by this revelation, Emily proposes that Linda go on the trip with her. Linda doesn’t want to as she prefers to play it safe, but Emily eventually convinces her to go.
The two arrive in Ecuador and stay at a resort. Emily is stuck with Linda in the king suite which was meant for a romantic getaway with Michael, but not anymore. They go outside by the pool where Linda applies a heavy amount of sunscreen to Emily’s body. They then meet Ruth (Wanda Sykes), who is on vacation with her mute ex-Special Forces best friend Barb (Joan Cusack). Ruth overhears Emily and Linda’s conversation about the dangers out there, which Ruth says are very real, but Barb can get in and out of dangerous situations.
Emily goes to a bar where she meets a handsome stranger named James (Tom Bateman). They hit it off and have drinks. He takes her to a nearby party where everyone is practicing capoeira, and Emily accidentally kicks a guy in the face. Afterwards, Emily and James agree to meet the next morning for a trip. Emily goes home super drunk and invites Linda to go with them. Linda refuses but Emily forces her to go when she rips out the last pages of a book Linda is reading.
Snatched is a 2017 American comedy film directed by Jonathan Levine and written by Katie Dippold. The film stars Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn (in her first film since 2002’s The Banger Sisters), with Joan Cusack, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes and Christopher Meloni in supporting roles, and depicts a mother and daughter who are abducted while on vacation in South America.
Snatched was premiered in New York City on May 2, 2017, was theatrically released on May 12, 2017 by 20th Century Fox. Üne fimk grossed $45.9 million in the United States and Canada and $15 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $60.8 million, against a production budget of $42 million. In North America, Snatched was released on May 12, 2017 alongside King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and was projected to gross $15 million to $20 million during its opening weekend. It made $675,000 from Thursday night previews at about 2,625 theaters, before expanding to 3,501 theaters for the weekend. It went on to debut to $19.5 million, finishing second at the box office, behind Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
Film Review for Snatched
“Snatched” is the highest of high-concept comedies. Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer star as a polar-opposite mother and daughter who get kidnapped while reluctantly vacationing together in Ecuador. It’s a mismatched-buddy comedy. It’s a fish-out-of-water comedy. It’s a raucous girl-power comedy.
But it’s not much more than a concept. Hawn and Schumer are stuck playing barely-there characters stumbling from one wacky scenario to the next. A cadre of kooks helps them along the way. Both women supposedly shift away from their comfort zones and closer to each other in the process. The end.
If you’re headed on your own vacation, “Snatched” would be a sporadically amusing way to pass the time on the plane, I suppose. As an exercise in afternoon cable-channel surfing while dozing in and out from cold medication, it’s harmless. But as a summer-launching comic adventure, it’s a frustrating waste of everyone’s abilities.
The iconic Hawn hasn’t graced the silver screen in 15 years—not since 2002’s “The Banger Sisters.” Here, she’s a cautious cat lady named Linda who inexplicably displays a preternatural, calm fortitude when the going gets tough. Hawn has elevated similarly throwaway material throughout her career (“Foul Play,” “Overboard,” “Bird on a Wire”), and it’s certainly lovely to see her again, but why come out of retirement for this? The expert timing remains, but she’s awkwardly hemmed-in, and you long to see her burst forth with her signature silliness.
Schumer, meanwhile, plays yet another version of her well-honed persona, which she did far more effectively (and to a surprisingly emotional extent) in 2015’s “Trainwreck.” Emily is boozy and blowsy. She’s selfish and vapid, but she can be fun. And her underlying insecurity and talent for tossed-off, self-deprecating asides make her an unexpectedly endearing figure.
Linda and Emily get tested repeatedly in “Snatched,” though the actresses playing them certainly don’t. But they have their moments together—especially in the film’s early going—which provide a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been with snappier direction and stronger material. It’s as if the mere idea of Hawn and Schumer playing a squabbling mother and daughter were enough. It’s not.
Director Jonathan Levine has shown far greater skill in balancing a variety of genres and tones with his previous films, including the great comedy-drama “50/50” and the horror-comedy “Warm Bodies.” Here, his mixture of action and laughs never quite gels. There’s a lifelessness to the physicality and a shriekiness to the humor.
Similarly, screenwriter Katie Dippold has shown a knack for creating strong and delightfully strange women with her work on “The Heat” and last summer’s all-female “Ghostbusters” reboot. But with “Snatched,” the characters never really deviate from their types until the very end, when they’re called upon to have a sudden and conciliatory change of heart. Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack show up from time to time as the overly prepared, platonic life partners who help Linda and Emily out of their various jams, but their dynamic feels half-baked, too.
“Snatched” starts with promise, though. The delusional Emily gets fired from her nowhere retail job and dumped by her burgeoning rock-star boyfriend (a very funny Randall Park) in quick succession. There’s a sly, understated nature to the humor here—a rhythm that steadily sneaks up on you. The two had been planning a romantic getaway to Ecuador, and since the trip is non-refundable, she has to find someone else to join her. After all her girlfriends reject her offer, she coaxes the divorced Linda, who still lives in the family’s suburban home with Emily’s nerdy, agoraphobic brother (an amusingly odd Ike Barinholtz), to travel with her to paradise.
But Emily’s flirtation at the hotel bar with a charming and hunky Brit (Tom Bateman) leads to peril for her and her mom, as the two find themselves the victims of a kidnapping plot by interchangeably menacing, brown-skinned bad guys. (Somewhere in here, “Snatched” might be trying to say something about the propensity of pampered Americans to travel abroad without ever daring to immerse themselves in the local culture, but it doesn’t do it in the most thoughtful or articulate way.)
From here, mother and daughter bicker and bungle their way through an escape and subsequent hijinks. It’s all pretty obvious stuff, and not nearly as outlandish as it strains to be. But an escalating side bit involving phone calls between Emily’s freaked-out brother and an unmotivated State Department official (Bashir Salahuddin) provides some off-kilter laughs, and it hints at the kind of movie “Snatched” might have been with a little more daring. Similarly, an interlude with a self-serious, self-styled adventurer in the Amazon (Christopher Meloni) offers some welcome surprises. But if the journey is the destination, “Snatched” never really goes anywhere.
Snatched (2017)
Oirected by: Jonathan Levine
Starring: Amy Schumer, Ike Barinholtz, Goldie Hawn, Christopher Meloni, Randall Parkş, Óscar Jaenada, Wanda Sykes, Tom Bateman, Fidel Salcido, Moani Hara, Ike Barinholtz, Daniel Bess
Screenplay by: Katie Dippold
Production Design by: Mark Ricker
Cinematography by: Florian Ballhaus
Film Editing by: Zene Baker
Costume Design by: Leesa Evans
Set Decoration by: Chryss Hionis
Art Direction by: Kevin Constant
Music by: Chris Bacon, Theodore Shapiro
MPAA Rating: R for crude sexual content, brief nudity, and language throughout.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: May 12, 2017
