Paul Feig’s new R-rated cop comedy The Heat is not exactly something audiences haven’t seen before; the boorish, slobby and foul-mouthed beat cop Melissa McCarthy paired with the neat-freak buttoned-down promotion-hungry Fed Sandra Bullock recalls everything from 48 Hrs. to The Odd Couple. The comedy dynamic (snob and slob) and the story beats (drug dealers, etc.) are almost as old as time itself, and play out as awkwardly and perfunctorily as they always have in movies like this; can you really tell me the actual story of Police Academy, for instance? But then, what we come to a movie like The Heat to see is the glittering comedic chemistry between two talented and funny actresses riffing on one another’s well-worn character lazzi, clearly improvising a lot of dialogue, and eventually learning to like one another (and, in the meantime, becoming endeared to the audience) despite their photonegative proclivities and crimefighting techniques. Criticizing the plot in a movie like The Heat is like criticizing the plate your sandwich came on. Perhaps important in a restaurant setting, but hardly the main event, so to speak.
And while I can find deliberately caustic characters like McCarthy’s Det. Sarah Mullins to be brash and awkward and off-putting, and while I often find myself wincing at the bend-over-backwards uncoolness of characters like Bullock’s Sp. Agt. Shannon Ashburn, the chemistry magically works in The Heat. These are two subtly brilliant comedic actresses who are being employed to the best of their abilities, all to actually pretty damn funny effect. They both play broad yet believable characters whose violent habits may not be entirely acceptable in the real world, but work surprisingly well in this movie’s universe. Ashburn is the straightlaced, by-the-book, entirely-too-efficient Fed who is sent to Boston to track down an unbeatable drug dealer, and who is, through a set of not-so-contrived circumstances, paired up with a streetwise beat cop named Mullins, who swears, drinks, sleeps around, and has a refrigerator full of illegal munitions. It’s Oscar and Felix from there. Their misadventures have them infiltrating dance clubs (including an impromptu lesson in club etiquette), visiting dive bars, and generally learning to love one another in that very usual, vaguely homoerotic buddy cop dynamic.
And it’s really funny a good 85% of the time, if not more. The energy is constantly running high, but never in a frantic way, and the two leads embody their roles so well, it’s hard not to love them as individuals, and admire the work they do together. You will laugh. Probably a lot.
Like so many R-rated comedies these days, The Heat does tend to overstay its welcome a bit. I often theoretically subscribe to Shakespeare’s old saying about wit and brevity being somehow connected, and seeing a comedy that runs 117 minutes can inevitably lead to a little bit of charm fatigue. For instance, there is a scene late in the movie involving a piece of emergency surgery on the floor of a Denny’s which is shocking and hilarious in its violence, but ultimately feels like the film is just spinning its wheels, hammering more and more on the sadness of Bullock’s lonely anal retentive, right when it should perhaps be ramping up to a climax or a catharsis of some sort.
There is a pleasant gender blindness to The Heat as well, and it will likely have some news outlets declaring, astonished, that a film starring women can actually make a lot of money or be charming and funny (handily forgetting about both Bridesmaids and whatever the last Sandra Bullock film was). The Heat is a film that is, yes, flatly slapstick in a few scenes (I laughed very hard when that one guy was smacked in the face with a phonebook), but also deals with female concerns in a natural and character-driven way. It’s a film about women that doesn’t feel the need to highlight its female-ness, walking a male audience through platitudinous feminism. It’s about women. Done.
So yes, the plotting and movement of The Heat is a bit too mildly casual for something that could have been a crackling 95-minute comedic explosion, but that’s a quibble in a film that is enjoyable all the way through. I have seen similar scenes played out to much lesser effect in lesser comedies (the angry misogynist, a miffed albino man angered at how people tend to pigeonhole him as a villain, is pretty priceless, seeing as he could have been sunk into mere offensive territory), and I was so relieved and delighted to watch them working so well here. This is essentially the funnier version of The Other Guys, and an actual notable film in the buddy cop comedy genre. It’s no classic, but it has the most important thing that a comedy needs: laughs.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles B-Movies Extended, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind. If you want to buy him a gift (and I know you do), you can visit his Amazon Wish List.
