Film Review: Snatched (dir by Jonathan Levine)

Posted on May 13, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, here’s the thing.

Lately, I’ve been seeing way too many good movies. Seriously. In March, I saw Logan and I thought it was great. Then, roughly a month later, I saw Free Fire and, at first, I thought it was disappointing but, as the weeks have passed, I haven’t been able to get the film out of my mind. Free Fire is definitely flawed but, if nothing else, all of the 70s-era costuming choices have stuck with me. And then last week, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, which I really enjoyed.

However, when you’re serious about movies, you can’t just watch the good ones and pretend that the bad ones don’t exist. So, this weekend, I decided that I would devote myself to seeing some bad movies. Fortunately, it appears that every film that opened today is bad so that definitely makes my task a bit easier.

With that in mind, earlier tonight, my BFF Evelyn and I went to a showing of Snatched. Snatched is a comedy that stars Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn as a daughter and a mother who go on vacation in South America and end up getting kidnapped and then lost in the Amazon rain forest. This was one of those movies that sounded terrible from the beginning. The plot sounded terrible. The trailer looked awful. For the most part, the reviews have been lacerating and the few good comments have largely been of the “It’s not a very good movie but I don’t want to be too critical lest anyone mistake me for a member of the Schumer-hating alt-right” variety.

In other words, I wasn’t expecting much when I saw Snatched and, for the most part, the film met my expectations. It’s not so much awful as it’s just forgettable and generic. Even the film’s “raunchy” moments feel rather bland, as if the filmmakers said, “Let’s just let Amy be Amy,” and then Amy showed up on the set with a bunch of sketches that were previously judged to be not quite good enough for Inside Amy Schumer. (Actually, in all fairness and as opposed to Trainwreck, Schumer did not write Snatched. Instead, the script for Snatched was written by Kate Dippold, who also wrote the script for Ghostbusters, another film that often struggled to maintain narrative momentum from scene to scene. Though the script was undoubtedly rewritten to accommodate her comic persona, a few reviews have been too quick to exclusively blame Amy Schumer for Snatched‘s flaws.)

The film actually starts with some promise. Emily Middleton (Amy Schumer) loses her job and her boyfriend, Micheal (Randall Park), in the same day. (The break-up scene, with Michael blithely dumping her and Emily desperately trying to convince both him and herself that she actually dumped him, is hilarious and briefly gave me hope for the rest of the movie.) Emily had been planning on going on a trip to Ecuador with Michael but now she’s stuck with two, nonrefundable tickets. Unfortunately, none of Emily’s friends are willing to go on a trip with her because, it turns out, they all kind of hate Emily.

In the end, Emily asks her mother, Linda (Goldie Hawn), to go to Ecuador with her. Linda, as evidenced by a scrapbook of all the trips that she took when she was younger, used to be adventurous but, after being abandoned by her husband, she now spends almost all of her time locked away in her house. She loves cats and her children, even if her son, Jeffrey (Ike Barinholtz) is kind of creepy. Linda is reluctant to go to Ecuador. She’s heard that it’s unsafe. But those tickets are non-refundable and soon, Emily and Linda are in South America.

And really, if Snatched had just been Linda and Emily hanging out at the resort and bonding, it probably would have been a better movie. Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer are believable as mother and daughter and their relationship had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the plot demands that Emily and Linda end up getting kidnapped and held for ransom. They escape fairly easily (and Emily kills a few people) but then they end up wandering through the rain forest, trying to make their way to the American embassy. Along the way, they meet a few people. Christopher Meloni is occasionally funny as a wannabe explorer but the film dispatches his character in a way that feels needlessly mean-spirited. There’s also a scene with a tapeworm, which would be funny if it was an isolated bit on a sketch comedy show but which feels out-of-place here. There’s even a poorly conceived scene, in which Emily helps a group of native villagers with their daily tasks and is complimented on it by Linda. At first, I thought the scene was supposed to be a parody of condescending white liberalism but then I realized that it actually was condescending white liberalism. (You can almost hear the story meeting where an executive said, “Since some people might find our portrayal of South America to be xenophobic and borderline racist, we need to have one scene where Goldie and Amy interact with some natives without having to kill any of them. One or two minutes will do. Don’t put too much effort into it, time is money…”) Snatched never seems to know what it’s trying to say or be.

That doesn’t mean that I didn’t chuckle sometimes. As I said, the first quarter of the movie was fairly enjoyable in its slapdash way. However, once the whole kidnapping plot kicked in and the film really got started, the only time I really laughed was when Linda reprimands her daughter with a sharp, “EMILY LOUISE!” I laughed because it reminded me of all the times that my mom would stop my bratty behavior by snapping, “LISA MARIE!” It was a moment that felt like an authentic and true mother-daughter moment and the fact that it happened while Emily and Linda were lost in the rain forest and being pursued by murderers is what made me laugh. At the same time, it’s also one of the few moments in Snatched that actually felt spontaneous. For a few seconds, the film actually felt alive.

Unfortunately, it’s very much an isolated moment. Snatched is not terrible but it is awfully forgettable. If you miss it in the theaters, don’t worry. It’ll probably be mainstay on TBS for years to come.

Film Review: The Shallows (dir by Jaume Collet-Serra)

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Have you seen The Shallows yet?

The Shallows was released last week, to strong box office and surprisingly good reviews. Ever since it came out, people have been telling me, “You have got to see The Shallows!” Well, I finally did see it earlier today and you know what? I should have seen it earlier. The Shallows is one of the best films of the year so far.

Now, I have to admit that, even before I saw the film, I was pretty sure that I was going to like it. Just from watching the trailer, The Shallows looked like a big-budget Asylum film or maybe a mainstream version of Shark Exorcist. After all, here we had a movie about a blonde in bikini being menaced by a giant shark while stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean. It looked like it would be one of those big, over-the-top nature-gone-crazy movies that I always enjoy watching on SyFy.

And, to a certain extent, it is. The Shallows was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, a Spanish director whose previous work would seem to indicate an appreciation for old school grindhouse and drive-in cinema. There’s really not a subtle moment to be found in The Shallows. The shark is huge and whenever it finds something to eat, the ocean turns red with blood and while this grudge-holding shark may not behave like a real-life shark, it does behave like a movie shark. When, at the start of the film, Lively is on her surfboard and blissfully unaware of the danger under the sea, girl power anthems blast on the soundtrack. Whenever the camera briefly pans underwater for a shot from the shark’s point of view, the music suddenly becomes ominous and full of menace. The action is nearly non-stop, pausing only occasionally for a few moments when the camera lingers on Lively either stretching on the beach or resting on the rock and yet the cinematography is so stunning and Lively’s performance is so great that these shots don’t feel exploitive but instead celebrate her both her outer and her inner strength. Undoubtedly, a lot of people are buying tickets because Blake Lively spends most of the movie in a bikini but The Shallows is still one of the most empowering films of the summer.

That’s right, I just said that Blake Lively gives a great performance. I have to admit that, despite loving Gossip Girl, I was never really sold on Blake Lively as an actress until I saw her in The Shallows. I thought she was wasted in The Town and her performance in Savages left me so annoyed that I was literally screaming in the theater. But no matter — Blake Lively proves herself to truly be a talented actress in The Shallows. From the minute she appears onscreen, you’re on her side. You’re happy for her when she finally gets to surf the beach that her recently deceased mother surfed when she was young. You fear for her when the shark makes its first blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance. And when she’s stranded on that rock, fighting for her own survival and trying to figure out a way to close a huge gash on her leg (and this was a scene that I literally watched through my fingers), you find yourself truly fearful that she’ll never be rescued. (One of the strengths of the film is that you’re never fully convinced that Lively is going to survive her ordeal.) Blake Lively gives a performance here that I would compare to James Franco’s breakthrough work in 127 Hours.

Actually, a lot of the scenes in The Shallows reminded me of 127 Hours. For that matter, there were also a few scenes that reminded me of Wild and, of course, the Jaws influence was obvious as well. The Shallows is a derivative film but, to its credit, it borrows from the best and Collet-Serra always manages to add his own individual spin to even the film’s most predictable moments.

Along with Lively’s performance and Collet-Serra’s direction, there are three other things that make The Shallows special.

Number one, it features an amazing seagull. The seagull, which has an injured wing, spends most of the movie hanging out with Blake Lively on that rock and provides her with some much needed companionship. The seagull also happens to be a helluva actor and, at times, I found myself even more worried about the seagull’s survival than Lively’s. According to the credits, the seagull’s name is Sully and he better get some love from the Academy next January.

Number two, there’s a scene in which two soon-to-be-doomed surfers ask Blake Lively if she’s from California. “No,” Lively replies, “Texas!” From the minute she said that, all of us at the Alamo Drafthouse were on her side. And, just in case any of you northerners have any doubts, people do surf in Texas. Just ask anyone who has ever spent spring break in Galveston or Corpus Christi.

Finally, The Shallows is a short movie and, after sitting through so many overlong movies, it was nice to see a movie that was direct and to the point and which did not include any unnecessary padding. The Shallows only needed 86 minutes to tell its story and not a minute more!

(Compare the 86-minute The Shallows to the 151-minute Batman v Superman and you’ll understand what film critics mean when they complain about a film being overlong.)

With its truly breathtaking shots of the ocean and it’s nonstop action, The Shallows is a film that you owe it to yourself to see on a big screen. So get to it!

Review: The Losers (dir. by Sylvain White)

Posted on April 24, 2010 by Arleigh

There’s something to be said about DC’s attempt to try and take some of the thunder away from Marvel as the two battle it out over the hearts and wallets of the film-going public. With the exception of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight DC’s properties has lagged behind that of Marvel when it comes to being adapted to the big-screen. Some would say that this is a good thing in that DC hasn’t flooded the market with too many comic book titles adapted to film. Marvel’s track record has been very good but they’ve also had some very awful comic book-to-film titles which at times almost derails this Golden Age of comic book films. But even with the misses Marvel has released they’ve done a good job of keeping their name brand in the film public’s eye. DC hasn’t been very good at this but this may be changing soon.

While not part of the DC Universe proper the Vertigo line of titles do belong under the DC umbrella. Vertigo has always been the more mature-oriented publishing arm of DC with well-known and critically-acclaimed writers such as Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis and Alan Moore being the top names releasing titles under that aegis. There’s already been several films based-off of the Vertigo line with Constantine and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen being two. Two examples which haven’t gone over well with comic book fans and film-goers. We now have another title from DC/Vertigo which hopes to break that cycle of mediocrity. The Losers (written by Andy Diggle) as directed by Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard) is a funny and exciting action-comedy which definitely had a chance to be one of the great comic book films if it actually had a coherent storyline.

The Losers is pretty much the name of the special-ops covert team the audience gets to know from start to finish. The basic premise to this film is actually straight out of late 80’s and early 90’s action films. A team of badass operatives gets betrayed during a covert mission by unknown parties who may or may not be working for the very organization the team has worked loyally for. For this particular reiteration of that action flick staple the team literally calls themselves the Losers and their betrayal occurs while in a secret mission inside Bolivia to take out a narco-terrorist. While their mission to take out this bad man does happen it does so with some new wrinkles such as first saving 25 innocent Bolivian children before the airstrike called in by them happens within 8 minutes. This eventual betrayal now forces the Losers’ commander, a military colonel called Clay (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan), to take his 5-man team deep under while convincing their CIA masters that they died during the operation.

The rest of the film revolves around the Losers being discovered by a third-party as still being alive and given a choice. The choice being to remain under the Agency’s radar, stay dead and in Bolivia or take on this third-party’s mission to take out the very man who betrayed them, get back their good name and return to their families or, for some, their old lives. Heading up this mysterious benefactor is the one and lovely Zoe Saldana (fresh-off a little flick called Avatar). She’s pretty much the only female of note in the whole film. One would think she’s the token female, but she’s more than capable of holding her own in a testosterone-fueled action-comedy.

What would an action-comedy about betrayed badass special-ops guys (and gal) without a bad guy to match. In The Losers we get the betrayer of the team in Max (played with an almost James Bond villainish flair by Jason Patric). He’s the one who gave them the team their last official mission in Bolivia and the same one to frame them for the a heinous crime they didn’t commit. To say that Max is over-the-top in terms of on-screen villainy would be an understatement. While the character doesn’t prance or growls his way through the film he does have a certain je ne sais quois about him that doesn’t pigeonhole him as your typical uber-bad guy.

One would think that with such a simple enough revenge and wronged team-on-a-mission set-up it would be quite an easy story to create and film around. I would have to say that the screenplay adapting the first two volumes of the original source material had left much to be desired. While it wasn’t a total waste there wasn’t enough of a story beyond creating set-pieces for the characters to either shoot at and blow stuff and people up, Max to show the audience how evil he really is, or show Saldana’s and Morgan’s character together either fighting or getting it on. The whole script used almost seemed like it was culled from a much bigger one.

What we do see on the screen was exciting and funny enough that it helps cover up enough of that major flaw of a non-existent story. In fact, I would say that the film behaved almost like an extended, well-shot and well-casted pilot for a new tv action series. It’s almost what I would expect USA Network’s excellent spy-comedy Burn Notice to look like if shot on 35mm, given a multi-million dollar budget and shot on exotic locations. The film definitely would’ve benefited from an additional 20-30 more minutes to help add muscle to the story. The fact of the matter is that the story actually was able to flesh out the main characters enough that they were all quite distinct in personalities without ever becoming cardboard copy caricatures.

It’s the chemistry between the ensemble cast which shines in The Losers. While Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen), Zoe Saldana and Jason Patric were the three main leads (with each of them pushing their own agenda over the other two) the rest of the players were very good in their roles. Idris Elba (The Wire) as Clay’s second-in-command Roque does a very good job of balancing out the cool-headed team leader. his name may not be spelled like it but he definitely was the rogue factor in the whole film. While the team itself wasn’t an amoral team of killers and expert covert ops operators it was the character Roque who came closest and Elba played him with enough menace that one might’ve wondered why he was actually still with the team instead of going off on his own. Columbus Short as driver extraordinaire and Óscar Jaenada as Cougar (got a hilarious reaction from Saldana’s character upon hearing of the name) the expert marksman who never seems to miss are good in their roles as well, but the one who stole every scene he was in was Chris Evans as Jensen who filled the role of team tech and communications expert.

Chris Evans is definitely not a novice when it comes to being part of a comic book film. He’s already done two portraying the wise-ass brother in the Fantastic Four franchise and already tapped to play one of Marvel Comics’ most iconic characters in Captain America. His character portrayal of the Losers’ Jensen is more akin to his work as Johnny Storm in the FF franchise. He was the funniest thing and most lively character in The Losers. He pretty much got the best dialogue and his comedic timing was on point. He definitely kept the film from leaning towards the too-serious side of the equation. His singing of Journey’s classic motivational song, “Don’t Stop Believing”, was one of the funniest moments in the film and the song itself ended up being the closing credits musical choices which I thought was quite appropriate.

Sylvain White’s work in this film I would say would constitute as being good and, at times, bordering on being very good. There were a few stylistic choices by White which elevated the action sequences into comic book territory such as sudden pauses in the action to capture a good kill or scene like one would see in a panel of a comic book page. Even some of the camera angles mimicked those angles used by comic book artists to create a more dynamic and stylized point of view of the scene. I thought his use of the slo-mo shots of the team walking towards the screen was done overmuch. It was good to show the team together for the first time with something exploding in the background, but just once would’ve been enough. His background as a music video director showed too much in The Losers that at times it became too distracting. Fortunately, it didn’t detract from the fun everyone seemed to be having on-screen. There’s talent in White as a filmmaker if he would just trust in his growing sense as a feature filmmaker and not fall back on his music video directing days. I did like the choice of using the original comic book art to highlight the starting and ending credits of the film. Artist Jock’s artwork was great to see on the screen.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with The Losers. I enjoyed the film despite a glaring flaw in the story (which was really nowhere to be seen). The film took the comic book film staple of “origin story” a bit too far and made the whole production look like a glorified and high-budgeted tv pilot for an action series. In fact, if DC and Warner Brothers wanted to make a series out of The Losers they already have said pilot in the can and just continue things from there. What really saves this film from becoming a huge disappointment was the cast and how much fun they had on-screen. The action scenes were not great but they had life in them and when propped up by some of the comedic stylings of one Chris Evans made the sequences enjoyable. While The Losers will not be anything to scare Marvel Studio into cranking out something similar it does help bring attention to some of the more non-superhero properties DC has in its Vertigo line. The film definitely has more excitement in it despite its major flaw than either Constantine and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I do hope it does well enough that a sequel gets greenlit and helps build more of a story in the follow-up now that introducing the characters and the world are now out of the way.