Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Snatched’ (2017)

A sharp turn off the beaten track – defying one’s traditional pattern of behavior – is at the heart of Snatched. Directed by Jonathan Levine, the female-centric movie adds another archetypal dimension to its Mother-Daughter theme: Saturnine safety and convention vs. Uranian risk, individualism and non-conformity.

Emily (Amy Schumer) has just been dumped by her boyfriend, with whom she was about to go on vacation to Ecuador. Left in the lurch with an unrefundable ticket, she visits her physical-security-obsessed mother Linda (Goldie Hawn) who also coddles her co-dependent and too-scared-to-set-foot-out-of-the-house geeky son Jeffrey (Ike Barinholtz) who calls her Ma-MAH.

Leafing through an old family album, Emily – a Venusian-Aphrodite party gal – sees photos of a younger Linda who back then also possessed Venus’s fun-and-pleasure gene. Buoyed by the images, Emily successfully persuades Mom to accompany her to a country with a proclivity for abductions.

Despite being read the riot act by fellow hotel guest (Wanda Sykes) and her silent partner Barb (Joan Cusack), in no time at all Linda – who’d rather read in her room – and Emily manage to get snatched, rescued and snatched again.

It’s a given that characters who are either too cautious or not cautious enough about life, as they are in Snatched, will find their gumption, undergo sea changes, and both lose and find themselves in the process.

Archetypes: Traditionalist. Fear. Hermit. Individualist. Risk Taker. Adventurer.

Astrology Archetype: ♄ ♅ (Saturn, Uranus)