Snatched: Send it back

Snatched (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity, crude humor and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang

It’s pretty sad when the star of a film is overwhelmed and out-funnied by her co-stars, and that’s definitely the case with Snatched.

On the run and lost in the Amazonian jungle, with a vengeful kidnapper on their trail,
Emily (Amy Schumer, left) and her mother Linda (Goldie Hawn) haven't the faintest idea
what to do next. Neither do this tawdry flick's director or writer.

Amy Schumer is by far the weakest link. Goldie Hawn, as her mother Linda, is funnier. Bashir Salahuddin, as a desk-bound U.S. State Department clerk, is much funnier. Joan Cusack, as a retired special ops agent, darn near steals the show ... and she doesn’t speak a word.

Mind you, Hawn, Salahuddin, Cusack and a few others are tiny bits of spice in very thin gruel. It’s hard to believe that Katie Dippold got paid for this miserable excuse for a script, particularly since it sounds like Schumer ad-libbed all of her dialog (scarcely an improvement). But, then, Dippold’s previous big-screen solo credit was 2013’s execrable The Heat, so clearly we shouldn’t have expected better.

Dippold seems to have become the go-to scripter for today’s two hottest foul-mouthed female comics, which makes sense; in terms of their big-screen personas, Schumer is basically a smuttier version of Melissa McCarthy (which is saying quite a lot). Schumer hasn’t yet met a situation that she couldn’t debase with a vulgar reference to sexual or bodily functions, and hey: If crude, tasteless potty humor is your cup of tea, you’re bound to have a good time with this flick.

Not that it features much else that could be considered entertainment value.

Schumer stars as Emily Middleton, a useless semi-adult introduced as she’s dumped by her musician boyfriend. Concerned less about her derailed love life and more about her two non-refundable tickets to an Ecuadorian tourist trap, Emily rattles unsuccessfully through her meager list of friends, and finally — as sloppy sixths or sevenths — persuades her mother to come along.

Such a trip is far outside Linda’s comfort zone, she being the type of stay-at-home, overly protective single mother whose idea of excitement is a pottery class. But Emily prevails, and the two unattached gals are off to paradise.

42: You know the number

42 (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, profanity and unpalatable language
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.12.13

42 is an unabashed valentine to baseball great Jackie Robinson: an old-style film laden with the sort of calculated sentimentality that Frank Capra delivered back in the day.

Relying on the split-second timing and sprinting ability that have made him a
sensational — and crowd-pleasing — base-stealer, Jackie Robinson (Chadwick
Boseman, left) delights in messing with the minds of pitchers who, after a few rounds
of this, sometimes lose their cool completely.

The pacing is leisurely and graceful, with unhurried takes granting us time to absorb the story and appreciate the performances. Writer/director Brian Helgeland and editors Peter McNulty and Kevin Stitt avoid the staccato pacing and smash-cuts that have become a 21st century norm, preferring instead to let events unfold in a manner that reflects the poetry of baseball itself.

Honestly, I found it quite refreshing.

Although Helgeland has taken pains to be faithful to the firestorm that erupted in 1947, when Robinson became the first player to break Major League Baseball’s infamous color line, the approach here is — at the risk of unintended irony — acutely black and white. All the positive (i.e. progressive) historical figures are extraordinarily virtuous, their memories honored here by behavior that is, for the most part, nothing short of saintly.

The racist crackers, on the other hand, are one-dimensional and mostly anonymous: a redneck sheriff here, a small-town gaggle of thugs there. The one exception, almost startling in a film that until this point has (rather unrealistically) avoided much blatantly racist language, comes from Alan Tudyk’s portrayal of Philadelphia Phillies manager Ben Chapman. No doubt Helgeland felt safe with this choice of highly visible villain, since by all accounts the actual Chapman’s on-field behavior was even worse than what we witness here.

But that’s getting ahead of things.

Although characters too good to be true often don’t work in our increasingly cynical age, this film gets its crucial dramatic juice from the sublime lead performance by Chadwick Boseman, an actor, playwright and stage director whose screen work thus far has been confined mostly to TV shows such as Lincoln Heights and Persons Unknown. I suspect that’s about to change, because Boseman never puts a foot wrong here.

It’s difficult to convey the mesmerizing, deeply stirring lightning in a bottle that emanates from a genuinely inspirational person: the breathtaking whoosh that erupts when a truly electrifying individual strides through a door and sucks all the air out of a room. We feel it in the presence of a gifted politician or preacher, or when a commanding actor takes the stage during a live theatrical performance.

Boseman has that sort of presence, and Helgeland coaxes truly fine and sensitive work from this young actor. Boseman’s line readings are heartfelt and well timed, but that’s only part of it; he carries himself in a manner that suggests the brave self-assurance that Robinson himself must have displayed, every waking minute during this tempestuous point in his career.

In a nutshell, Boseman’s performance is inspirational in the same way that Robinson himself must have stirred so many people, back in 1947.