Review: ‘The Heat’

So “The Heat” is supposed to be Paul Feig’s big follow up to the hugely successful “Bridesmaids” and for a while there we were all interested in this movie as if Mr. Feig (creator of television’s Freaks & Geeks) was the next Judd Apatow or Dennis Dugan (look him up and weep), and it’s as if we all forgot that the very funny Kristen Wiig actually wrote “Bridesmaids” and that could be a big reason for the movie’s success, and not so much because it was directed by the guy that made “Unaccompanied Minors.”

Looks like maybe “The Heat” screenplay could have used a pass from Ms. Wiig, because it’s just an okay movie, a half-smart update on the 1980s buddy-cop action comedy genre (see: 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon). See, instead of the mismatched buddies being a couple of dudes (done to death!) or a dude and his dog (this has been done a few times actually) or a dude and a precocious kid (“Cop and a Half,” we’re looking at you, you piece of shit), we got a couple of mismatched ladies. Oh snap, take that, gender bias!

“The Heat” starts with uptight, overachieving and difficult-to-work-with FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock, Speed 2: Cruise Control, The Net) being assigned to a tricky case in Boston, where she is forced to work with crude, in your face and difficult-to-work-with Boston PD Detective Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy, Go, White Oleander), and while they find each other difficult to work with (shock!), they still band together in the name of what’s right and eventually start to respect each other and help each other become better people and blah blah blah blah because it seems they decided that making this a buddy cop action comedy about two women instead of two men would be enough to rehash the same old plot points and character arcs.

Seriously though how many more movies do we need to see about taking down drug dealers? Really, this is a serious question. Because every year for the last few decades we get a bunch of movies about drug dealers along with television shows and a bunch of other shit, so when can we put this fucking trope to bed and move on, find a new bad guy? At least in “Black Dynamite” they were selling the drugs directly to the orphaned children because why the hell not, who has the balls to do THAT in a movie?

Anyway, with comedy being so subjective, it doesn’t do anyone much good to admit that I didn’t laugh out loud very often in this movie, especially since I was in a theater full of people that were just dying from laughter at a bunch of scenes throughout, so this comedy definitely works for a lot of people. For whatever reason, I just wasn’t feeling it that much. I found it all more amusing more than laugh out loud funny.

Also I love to see Bill Burr pop up in a movie, especially when he gets to play a loud, obnoxious asshole from Boston (which he seems to excel at for some odd reason), but he feels wasted here with only a couple of scenes. Even more underused is Jane Curtin, and really I don’t see the need for them to dig her up out of nowhere and put her in a movie just to have her do absolutely nothing except flick off Melissa McCarthy and be mad. Not even funny mad. Just mad.

And to top it off, you’re going to cast Marlon Wayans in your movie and relegate him to unsuccessful love interest? At least let him dress up like a white teenage girl or a baby for his scenes if your going to have him in your movie and then not use him.

Of course this movie is all about McCarthy and Bullock, and it is fun to watch them banter back and forth (really it’s mostly McCarthy just abusing Bullock), and the whole “drug dealers” story line that puts them together is very much secondary to everything else, which is part of why the movie feels a little half-baked and ultimately forgettable. Instead it seems like the big light bulb went off when they thought to put two women in the leading roles of an old 80s script, and they forgot to change anything else.