(2 / 5)
 
Watching a movie like Snatched isn’t the hardest thing in the world. There are groaners to sit through but then there are others where you get to laugh, so in the end you come out of it unscathed. But how to handle that as a reviewer and need to let people know if it’s worth their time?
Emily (Amy Shumer) is bragging to a costumer that her career will lead her places and her successful boyfriend’s in a band and they’ll be going on a vacation. This is of course not very acceptable and is then fired, what does she care with her boyfriend? Unfortunately when she goes to meet him he breaks-up with her, she’s is boyfriend and job less. So her life sucks now, it’s not helped by the fact that the person that takes the greatest interest in her life is her mother Linda (Goldie Hawn) a woman that has no real life so obsesses over her children and snuggles in her home, never leaving. The vacation is non-refundable and being that none of Emily’s friends wanna go with her it’s a mother and daughter trip.
While staying at the hotel there’s plenty of tension between mother and daughter, they just don’t click, but she meets a man at the bar and he genuinely seems interested in her. He takes her out of the hotel area and experience the culture, the next day Emily insists to her mother that she come along on a drive he has planned. During the drive a van slams into them, they then wake up in  a dingy prison with people telling them what do and where to go. Now they have to get out of their situation alive.

The comedy is mainly focused on the incompetence of this duo being placed in an environment completely beyond their control or some cringe moments. They are a mixed bag, some jokes genuinely do land while others are far too forced and fall really hard. Take one moment where Emily is stumbling drunk back to her hotel lobby after a night-out with the guy she met at the bar, the big punchline is pretty-much as low-bar as it can get. There is though another time when they meet someone to help them navigate their situation and what they do with this character is funny. As a whole though it has more hits than misses.
The weakest moments are when Shumer tries to be the high-point of the scene. These aren’t generous moments and she’s trying way too hard to be ridiculous, she’s not afraid to look foolish but in her efforts that all she does, look foolish.
The most consistently funny character is the brother Jeffery (Ike Barinholtz) and his interactions with a middle management Morgan (Bashir Salahuddin). They have a dynamic that is is snappy and instantly satisfying. So much so that a movie based around these two would probably have been better.
What we have is a movie paring two funny women together and at times gives them material which will get a laugh out of you. Other times it goes too far and becomes obvious and you just have to sit there until the scenes over. This wont go down as an endearing comedies, nor the high-point of Jonathan Levine’s career. But it is not dreadful either.