Film Review: Snatched

Amy Schumer has made a career out of being comedy’s cool girl. Brash and self-deprecating, the comic always seems ready to crack open a beer and regale you with tales of awkward sexual exploits. Her fans delight in this trademark lack of filter – there’s little she won’t say or do for a laugh. Sadly, that lack of filter has led her to trade on racist comments and stereotypes that she refuses to apologise for – not that it’s dimmed her popularity. And Schumer’s millions of fans who adore crude humour and racism? Man, they are going to love Snatched.

The actress plays Emily, a 30-something screw-up whose life is thrown into unforgivingly sharp focus when she loses her job and boyfriend. Suddenly single and left with two non-refundable tickets to Ecuador, Emily convinces her nagging, agoraphobic mother Linda (Goldie Hawn) to have a South American adventure. They’re almost immediately kidnapped, because, you know, all countries that are not America and all men who are not white are inherently dangerous.

Director Jonathan Levine (50/50, The Wackness) creates a relentless pace, leading Schumer and Hawn through a barrage of car-chases, gun fights and amateur parkour as they try to escape their captors. It’s not quite enough to distract from Katie Dippold’s screenplay, as the mother-daughter bonding plot fails to overcome the lazy character tropes and exhausting American sensibility.

Schumer is skilled at relatable body humour, and early scenes where Emily is caught farting or doing some intimate grooming play into the character’s clueless charm. Supporting players Wanda Sykes and Ike Barinholtz are hilarious, the latter playing Emily’s nerd brother who tries to rescue the women via a series of bumbling phonecalls to the State Department. Veteran comic actress Hawn, sadly, is given far less to do. Linda’s uptight nature leaves no room for Hawn’s adorable silliness to shine, and she often looks like she wants to be elsewhere. I don’t blame her.

Directed by Jonathan Levine. Starring Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack. 91 mins. In cinemas now