While Goldie Hawn hasn't made a movie since 2002's The Banger Sisters, she knows a thing or two about comedy. From Overboard to Private Benjamin, the actress has made thousands of movie-lovers laugh for decades, and will soon bring her particular brand to the '10s with Jonathan Levine's Snatched. It's a surprising return to the big screen, but it was a move partially motivated by the fact that Hawn sees in the film what makes a lot of classic comedies great: legitimate depth of story.
Late last month I sat down with Snatched stars Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn in Las Vegas at CinemaCon -- the annual convention for movie theater owners -- and had a long discussion about their upcoming collaboration. Recognizing Hawn's veteran status in the comedy game, I took the opportunity to ask how comedy has changed in the time she's been in the industry -- and she explained how she feels as though the jokes to story ratio has been tweaked in the last few decades. Said the actress,
Things have changed a lot. I look at story, right? All movies for me were always about story. And comedy went with that, with character development, story... because you could turn anything into a comedy. And every movie that I had done or produced I could tell as a drama. And some people didn't recognize it. But the drama is what grounds the comedy. And so today I don't see that as much. You can go out there and you can be funny, and you can do sketches, and things, but somehow they don't quite link together to create a real story. And I think we are storytellers! That's who we are as filmmakers. So I miss that. Because it's easy to get a cheap joke, but how does it connect to the next piece of it, and what does it add up to?
It's certainly a noteworthy point -- and one that other creatives have levied in recent years. Hell, it was at the center of a multi-episode arc of South Park used to take down the mindless comedy of Family Guy.
As Goldie Hawn continued, however, she noted that she doesn't feel Snatched is that way, and instead offers up something more than just cheap laughs to affect audiences. Illustrating a connection between the new movie and Amy Schumer's last starring vehicle, Judd Apatow's Trainwreck, she explained that watching the fully adventure film with have a certain depth that will actually stick with audiences:
So this particular movie had all the bones and everything to be, what I perceived the movie, to be something that you remember. A lot of movies you don't remember, but when you look at movies like Trainwreck which was really funny, it was out there, it was crazy, Amy was doing the best of Amy. But there was pathos, those scenes with the father were really deep scenes. That's what you remember, and that's what your brain remembers, because it hooks on to what you're experiencing emotionally. So that's the long and the short of it!
You can watch Goldie Hawn talk about the way comedy has changed over the years in the video below:
Snatched, which stars Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer as a mother and daughter who get kidnapped while on a South American vacation, is scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 12th. Be sure to stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more about the film!
