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Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Heat (2013)


For such a gifted comedic actress, Sandra Bullock seems to have an awful hard time finding quality roles in the genre. Even when a comedy of hers breaks through, like The Proposal, it still seems like she’s working a bit below what she’s capable of. The new buddy cop comedy The Heat isn’t exactly a goldmine of creativity, but it does provide Bullock a chance to do more with her talents than we’ve seen the last several years. The movie itself is a disappointing mixed bag that coasts a little too much for its own good, but there are still a handful of laughs sprinkled throughout, and almost all of them can be credited to the performances of Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. They make for a fine comedic duo, but they’re stuck in a movie that doesn’t give them anything unique to do.


Set in Boston, FBI agent Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) has been sent into the field to investigate a drug kingpin in the area. She is involuntarily teamed up with the vulgar police officer Shannon Mullins (McCarthy), who refuses to just sit back and cooperate with the federal investigators. Ashburn is a straight-laced, by the book agent while Mullins is something of a wild card, and as you might expect the two eventually settle their differences and focus on the task at hand. That’s not before they have a few arguments of course, including one that conveniently comes at the end of the second act and threatens to ruin their entire friendship. The plot of The Heat wasn’t scripted as much as it seems like the result of someone running down a buddy cop cliché checklist.

For a movie like this to really work, there needs to be some kind of significant twist on the genre. Take a movie like Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, which presents itself as a fairly typical buddy cop comedy but then eventually goes in several gloriously ridiculous directions. It begins typical but then winds up being anything but typical. Everything about The Heat is typical, with the exception of the two leads being female, which is great in its own way. There really are no movies made about female cops—and this year there haven’t been many movies about females period—and in that respect it’s hard not to root for The Heat. Even so, a mediocre movie is a mediocre movie, and the actual substance of this film hurts the overall product far more than it helps anything.

It’s a shame, because Bullock and McCarthy really are quite good here. Like most middle-of-the-road comedies, The Heat is a little too content to coast on their considerable talents. Scenes in which these two characters interact are usually the only ones in which there are actual laughs, and when they come they are genuine. The problem is in order for a comedy to be good, both the performances and the content have to be funny. Here the content provides absolutely nothing, and frequently it actually restricts what the performers can do. It’s a shame, but when The Heat is funny it is undeniably funny. When it isn’t funny, it’s unfulfilling.

The Heat is also director Paul Feig’s follow-up to the smash hit Bridesmaids, and while he continues to be one of my favorite people working in comedy I think he’s also capable of a whole lot more than what is on display here. He was the man behind Freaks and Geeks of course, but he seems to be transitioning completely into for-hire directorial work. (Not that this is new. He's been a TV director for a while.) That disappoints me slightly, but I’m fine with it so long as he makes movies like Bridesmaids. If he keeps making movies like The Heat I’ll be slightly more disheartened. He’s a filmmaker that has a track record of engaging material and getting great work out of his performers. He certainly does the latter in this film, but he’s not quite able to elevate the script to where it needs to be. Everyone in front of the camera does their job, and well. They deserve better than the film they're being asked to perform.


Grade: C+

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