Snatched, film review ★★★★★

Amy Schumer continues to be the ultimate expression of millennial self-loathing. Her brand of comedy is all about selfie-fuelled self-absorption undercut by deflated expectations and the humiliations of Tinder, and her character in Snatched is the embodiment of a generation’s own fears about itself. Are we well-travelled but culturally ignorant? Have our parents been too nice to us?

Elizabeth (Schumer) is vaguely insufferable but not unlikeable: she’s privileged (as all millennials are, doncha know), but also a rather hapless punching bag for life, at least lately. She’s just been fired, and her hipster-musician boyfriend has broken up with her in order to take full advantage of groupies. This happens right before she’s due to take a trip in Ecuador, and the flights are non-refundable. Yes, this is a particularly millennial kind of crisis, but don’t get smug Gen-Xers: we’ve seen Friends, and you guys were just as bad.

Fortunately, Elizabeth is able to persuade her mother Linda (Goldie Hawn) to join her on the trip. Linda is a single divorcee, comfortable with a life that doesn’t extend beyond her front door, but Elizabeth has discovered that her mother used to be a bit of a wild child and won’t take no for an answer. The two head to their resort hotel for an exotic getaway, and Snatched seems set to be a nicely observed comedy about family dysfunction until the real plot kicks in: Elizabeth and Linda are kidnapped by sinister foreigners (Schumer has been accused of exploiting racial clichés before) and must work together to escape.

Amy Schumer in Snatched

Stand-ups can make good films, up to a point. They’ve often got the performative instincts to pull off acting, but rarely the ability to act as someone other than themselves. They’re also used to holding court alone, being the centre of both audiences’ attention and their own jokes, and it skews the whole balance of whatever film they’re in (unless they’re a bit-part). Even the greatest stand-up-turned-film-maker has made only a handful of films about people who aren’t Woody Allen.

That’s why Snatched is only half as good as Schumer’s previous film. Trainwreck easily warped itself around her egotistical, flawed, funny persona; Snatched features a similar ‘Amy’ character, but this time she’s sharing screen-time with an action-comedy plot and Goldie Hawn. The former is flexible (or at least dispensable), but Hawn is ill-served by a part that is written around Schumer: indoorsy divorcee isn’t a role that suits her.

The result is that the film is lopsided, but Schumer is allowed to be funny in her own narrow, effective way. Forgettable, filthy fun.