Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Reasonably fun and funny.  Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer have good chemistry and deserve better material.

I love how easily Amy Schumer can slip into the oblivious white woman role.  She is very obviously not that type of woman given her writing abilities, but she puts the role on like she were slipping into her favorite sweatpants and sweater.  In “Snatched”, she plays Emily Middleton, who is, you will be shocked to find out, an oblivious white woman.  Emily is recently broken up with her boyfriend with whom she planned to go to Ecuador on vacation.  In desperate need of a traveling companion, she decides to bring her mom, Linda (Goldie Hawn).  While there, they are kidnapped, held for ransom, and hilariously escape.  As a side note, it was really great to see Goldie Hawn in a movie again.

The movie was written by Katie Dippold, who has a few decent female buddy comedy movies under her belt now, including “The Heat” and “Ghostbusters”, but she was also a writer on “Parks and Recreation” and “MadTV” before that, so she’s a comedy writing pro at this point.  Dippold’s humor is more awkward funny than laugh out loud funny.  Having a mom and daughter combo certainly sets up the possibility for the awkwardness to be ramped up to 11.  To some extent, Dippold delivers.  There are scenes like the breakup and family dinner that are awkwardly funny in all the right ways.  But then there are scenes like the suntan lotion slathering scene and the tapeworm scene that are just forced and not terribly funny.

The movie did raise an important question that I had never thought about.  Say you were kidnapped and managed to escape and phone the United States State Department to let them know you were kidnapped.  What would they actually do?  What can they do?  In the movie, Linda and Emile are told to get to the nearest U.S. Consulate as soon as possible.  I have no idea if that is actually what would happen, but it feels about right.

If you’re jonesing for an Amy Schumer comedy, I’d recommend renting “Trainwreck” which is far superior to this movie.  “Snatched” does, however, have a certain amount of charm which makes it worth watching, even if it’s not the type of comedy that sticks with you afterwards.