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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