Snatched

SNATCHED (Jonathan Levine, 2017)

In SNATCHED Emily Middleton (Amy Schumer) loses her job and boyfriend in quick succession, meaning that the timing for her imminent, nonrefundable vacation for two to Ecuador comes when she needs it most and can least afford it. Unable to find a friend interested to take her ex’s spot, Emily persuades her mother Linda (Goldie Hawn) to tag along. Linda is a worrywart who is happy to lay around the resort reading books than seeing the sites. Hotel guests Ruth (Wanda Sykes) and her best friend, retired Special Ops agent Barb (Joan Cusack), confirm Linda’s fears about being vigilant for one’s safety while out of the country.

Emily disregards them and sidles up to handsome stranger James (Tom Bateman), with whom she has an amazing night experiencing the area like a local. Emily convinces her mother to join her and James on a day trip that ends with the validation of Linda’s worst anxieties. They are abducted and held for ransom. Their best hope for rescue rests back home with Emily’s agoraphobic brother Jeffrey (Ike Barinholtz) even as they escape from their captors and end up lost in the Colombian countryside.

Teaming up heroes across a shared universe is the go-to strategy for event pictures these days. In bringing together most prominently Schumer and Hawn, who returns to the movies after fifteen years, SNATCHED does something similar with funny women in film. It’s a good idea in theory even if it doesn’t always translate in practice. In spite of the equal billing, Hawn is often underutilized, especially because her character isn’t on screen for a significant portion of the film’s ninety minutes. She has a good rapport with Schumer but deserves more opportunities to show off her comedic chops than this second fiddle part. Christopher Meloni’s supporting role as an expedition leader produces bigger and more memorable laughs than the presumptive co-lead.

As the main character it’s hard to suggest that Schumer steals a movie that basically belongs to her anyway. Regardless, her TRAINWRECK follow-up reasserts her talents as a film comedian. She’s game for whatever Katie Dippold’s screenplay throws her way, and that comfort allows her to shrug off the humiliating lengths her character will go to in pursuit of her desires. Although Emily bares a neediness that leads her into embarrassing situations, Schumer plays it as a strength in expressing herself instead of exposing a pathetic, mewling quality. She’s good-humored about it, which is why she can pull off a scene as mortifying as the one when her date accidentally sees her in a compromising position as she gets cleaned up for a night out.

The humor in SNATCHED is certainly not refined but exudes puckish vulgarity that grants more leeway for the dirtiest jokes and a hilarious gross-out gag with a tapeworm. The playfulness also helps to gloss over the the potentially troublesome stereotypes the film imposes on many of the South American characters. SNATCHED appears to be laughing at the distorted views of this part of the world as shaped by the news, but it’s fair to consider if it is reinforcing them. The takeaway from the film isn’t such depictions, though, but Schumer’s willingness to go for broke.

Grade: B

Sisters

SISTERS (Jason Moore, 2015)

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are funny, likeable performers, but they can’t appear in a film and make it golden by sheer force of personality. It feels as though that’s what is being asked of them in SISTERS, a slack comedy that wagers the audience will be tickled enough by seeing them behave irresponsibly and hearing them deliver a good one-liner every now and then. Their rambunctious dispositions shine in moments, like during their shameless, suggestive flirtation with a guy landscaping his yard and when they are confronted by an old school acquaintance they didn’t invite to their bash. Fey and Poehler’s characters, the Ellis sisters, know they possess power in the situations and aren’t ashamed to wield it with authority. SISTERS clicks when their naughty streaks emerge because they’re the aggressors and flails when the Ellises’ recklessness is like a party trick they’re called upon to impress everyone with.

Poehler plays the younger sister Maura, a divorced nurse who is preternaturally nice to seemingly everyone she encounters. Not only is she upset when her parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest) inform her that she and her older sister Kate (Fey) need to return to Orlando to clean out their bedrooms because they’re selling the family home, but it’s also put upon her to share the news with her irresponsible sibling. Maura gets Kate to accompany her on a trip to Florida without providing the underlying reason. The unemployed and virtually homeless Kate is happy to get out of town. When they arrive at their childhood home, they discover that their parents have already sold it.

If the sisters have to accept that a part of their past will no longer remain in family ownership, then they intend to say goodbye with a massive final party at it. They invite old high school friends, many of whom welcome a break from domestic predictability and a chance to relive their youthful recklessness. Maura and Kate agree to switch roles from when they were teenagers, with the younger sister free to cut loose and and seduce neighbor James (Ike Barinholtz) while Kate keeps a watchful eye on her and their guests. Things get out of hand, though.

Longtime SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE writer Paula Pell’s SISTERS screenplay lacks sting. Even as it trots out some vulgarity intended for shock value, it produces less of a zap than the static discharge after rubbing one’s feet on the carpet and touching a doorknob. The mushy quality to the jokes reflects how a comedy sketch writer pressed against deadline turns to the easiest punchlines than funnier options that need more time to be worked on. The scenario is set up and resolved rather quickly, leaving an enormous amount of time devoted to the party itself. These scenes of suburbanites shedding their inhibitions seem to last forever with diminishing comedic returns.

SISTERS’ underlying message is similar to NEIGHBORS regarding coming to terms with one’s age in life, but who cares about what a film is saying when everything wrapped around it is thoroughly mediocre? Poehler and Fey emerge unscathed from the lackluster film, even though this stands as yet another deflating reminder of the uninspired state of mainstream film comedy.

Grade: C-