Snatched

About as hit-and-miss a comedy as one could envision, Snatched follows Amy Schumer’s Emily Middleton as she reluctantly invites her mother (Goldie Hawn’s Linda) to join her on a South American vacation – with chaos ensuing after the two are kidnapped by guerrillas and held for ransom. It’s perhaps not surprising to discover that Schumer delivers a comically-broad performance that contributes heavily to the uneven atmosphere, as the actress eschews the creation of an actual character and instead relies heavily on her sarcastic, one-liner-spouting persona – although, in fairness, a lot of this stuff is quite funny. The pleasantly watchable atmosphere persists right up until the aforementioned kidnapping, after which point Snatched devolves into a series of incredibly erratic set-pieces detailing Emily and Linda’s perilous adventures in and around a South American jungle – with the movie’s midsection containing an almost equal number of effective, entertaining sequences and those that just fall flat. (In terms of the latter, there’s an ongoing subplot involving Chris Meloni’s rugged outdoorsman that doesn’t entirely work, although the conclusion of this storyline provides the movie with one of its only laugh-out-loud funny moments.) The spinning-its-wheels vibe persists right through to the somewhat lackluster conclusion and it is, in the end, clear that certain segments of the narrative should’ve been jettisoned completed (eg the pointless tapeworm sequence) – with the strong chemistry between Schumer and Hawn ultimately one of Snatched‘s few consistent elements.

**1/2 out of ****