RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
There's a certain movie out this week that caught our eye. It's called "Snatched," and it features two generations of funny women - Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer. They play a mom and a daughter vacationing together in Ecuador. And it seems like an awesome on-screen pairing, although the trailer for the movie - which we should say is a little bit raunchy - well, we'll just play it, and you can make up your own mind.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SNATCHED")
AMY SCHUMER: (As Emily Middleton) Let's go out tonight - hair, makeup, boobs. We're going out.
GOLDIE HAWN: (As Linda Middleton) Emily, I am not going out at night.
SCHUMER: (As Emily Middleton) Everything shouldn't be so scary.
WANDA SYKES: (As Ruth) Oh, it damn well should - 1 in 4 tourists are kidnapped.
MARTIN: Oh, a little Wanda Sykes there at the end. We wanted to know if this was really a good movie, so we called up Linda Holmes. She is NPR's pop culture reporter. Hi, Linda.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Hi, Rachel.
MARTIN: So you pay attention to a movie that stars Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer. That's a lot of star comedy power.
HOLMES: Sure.
MARTIN: Is this a movie I should go see?
HOLMES: I liked it. I thought it was really funny. There's a lot of shared DNA between this movie and this kind of tradition of comedies with funny women in them. It was written by Katie Dippold, who also wrote "The Heat"...
MARTIN: Yeah.
HOLMES: ...Which I really liked.
MARTIN: Yeah.
HOLMES: It was executive produced by Paul Feig. He did "Bridesmaids" and "Spy." It's also in the tradition of movies about you stay out all night running away from bad guys. That's happened with bad guys in New York, bad guys in LA, bad guys anywhere.
MARTIN: I mean, it's a good formula.
HOLMES: It is a good formula. I will say the caveat about this movie is there is a danger that when it's bad guys in Ecuador, you wind up in that place of, you know, people in other countries are scary. For me, the movie stayed out of that rut in part because everyone in it is a cartoon including Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn. And there's also a caricature of kind of the American Indiana Jones-type, so everybody is getting lampooned.
MARTIN: There's a self-awareness about it.
HOLMES: But I'll be interested to see how that conversation goes because I think it will strike some people that way.
MARTIN: So you talked about the cartoonish nature of it. I mean, that's what Goldie Hawn does well.
HOLMES: Yes.
MARTIN: When I think back at her movies, she broke ground doing that kind of comedy.
HOLMES: Right.
MARTIN: And for people who aren't familiar with Goldie Hawn - shame on you, first of all. Second of all, let's play a clip from one of my favorite movies, "Private Benjamin."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PRIVATE BENJAMIN")
HAWN: (As Judy Benjamin) Look. To be truthful with you, I can't sleep in a room with 20 strangers.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Oh, dear.
HAWN: (As Judy Benjamin) And, I mean, look at this place. The Army couldn't afford drapes? I mean, I'll be up at the crack of dawn here.
MARTIN: I mean, she always - she's kind of playing up these feminine stereotypes.
HOLMES: Right. A lot of her history is playing women who are in a place they didn't expect to be. In that one, she's in the Army, and she's complaining essentially about the conditions not being fancy enough. There's also one called "Overboard," where she winds up taking care of...
MARTIN: Love that.
HOLMES: ...A man and his kids, and she's...
MARTIN: Kurt Russell.
HOLMES: ...The - exactly. She's a rich lady and winds up with this kind of working class dude. And there is a moment in "Snatched" where you see some imagery of Goldie Hawn when she was younger which to me kind of salutes that long and really fun career that she's had that you'll see if you see the movie.
MARTIN: So this plays to her strengths, this film - Hawn's.
HOLMES: I think it does. And I think it's - she's an interesting pairing with Amy Schumer because Goldie Hawn, of course, came up when being a funny woman required a lot more lightness of touch. People were much more picky about what kind of funny woman you could be.
MARTIN: Yeah.
HOLMES: Amy Schumer is much more bawdy and raunchy, not as much in this movie as in other stuff, whereas Goldie Hawn was kind of the big blinky-eyed - you know?
MARTIN: Makes you wonder if Goldie Hawn looks at Amy Schumer and says, I wish I could have been you back in the day, but...
HOLMES: Maybe.
MARTIN: ...I wasn't allowed.
HOLMES: They have lovely chemistry. They do well.
MARTIN: So does this mean that we don't have to talk about women in comedy and how exceptional that is anymore?
HOLMES: It is amazing to look back. As recently as "Bridesmaids," people saying like, will people go to a comedy that's all a bunch of women? Yes. Quiet. Done. Stahp (ph). That's what I say.
MARTIN: I think we should leave it there. NPR's Linda Holmes. Thanks so much, Linda.
HOLMES: Thanks, Rachel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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