The Heat

Clearly an oddball pair, Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side) and Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaides) are both on the right side of the law and looking to take out all criminals that have the misfortune of ending up in their way. There are a ton of successful female lead blockbusters as well as cop-buddy classics, so the big question is; does this film successfully mix those two elements and succeed?

Shannon Mullins (McCarthy) is certainly not conventional in any fashion. She’s a rough-talking, high-octane, foul-mouthed, thick-skinned old-school cop who doesn’t care to jump out on the dirtiest of streets to get business handled. She boasts a refrigerator full of high-impact weaponry including as a grenade she bought off eBay that “occasionally ticks” and is unhappily part of a family of stereotypical nuts, including her brother (Michael Rappaport) that she put in jail herself.

Sarah Ashburn (Bullock), on the other hand,  is a by the book, straight-laced, uptight FBI agent who never cares to toot her own horn after showing up the various men on the force. She’s the typical good at her job, spends more time with it than anything else detective that you may be used to seeing by now, but as a fun twist, her best-friend is her neighbor’s cat. That alone may not tickle your funny bone, but how she bonds with it is pretty cute actually.

The plot of the film is that these two unlikely officers of the law come together to take down a drug-lord. That, again, may be a pretty usual story, but it’s put together very well actually. The back and forth one-liners between McCarthy and Bullock make this film an instant cop-buddy classic in my eyes. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Michael McDonald of Mad TV fame is one of the higher-profile bad guys. It all comes together to show that women can absolutely lead comedies and cop-buddy films just as well as Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson.

My only issue is that, and to most this probably won’t even matter, I feltthe dialogue in spots seemed foul just for the sake of being foul. I have absolutely zero problems with bad language, it just feels forced from time to time. Like it felt needed to the writers to make sure we laughed. I think I honestly laughed more at Bullock’s up-tight ways than I did at McCarthy’s balls to the wall character. But don’t let me sound a naysayer, she was great in her role as well. It’s completely the dialogue that I felt was slightly subpar in spots.