The heat is on!
I watched The Heat last Thursday (June 27). As we all know, the buddy cop movie genre has always been dominated by male actors in the past at Hollywood. Now that it features two female comedians, does it have enough heat to be hot in theaters?
From director Paul Feig of Bridesmaids, an uptight FBI agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) and foul-mouthed Boston cop Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) couldn’t be more incompatible. But when they join forces to bring down a ruthless drug lord, they become the last thing anyone expected: buddies.
After focusing on Oscar-winning dramas like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock is finally back in doing comedies – her comfort zone. Like her role in Miss Congeniality, she plays an FBI agent again and does a variation of that performance. If you’re familiar with Bridemaids, I know you’ll be expecting hilarious acting from Melissa McCarthy and I can say she’s consistently terrific all throughout getting most of the laughs better than her early stint this year in Identity Thief. Together, they proved to be a funny duo. I read that they did improvise their lines a lot and it mostly worked. They are both game in making fun of themselves by doing outrageous acts that you might actually wonder if these two really won and got nominated for an Oscar. This is their show.
In terms of the plot, it doesn’t offer much than your typical buddy cop movie basic formula – two cops who don’t go along so well then eventually they became friends and you know the rest. But still the director proved it can still be entertaining. Like his previous direction in Bridesmaids, he knows how to present the female dynamics to the audience and make it look watchable.
At first, I honestly wasn’t fully into the movie. I find the investigation part less interesting but when the film reaches the bar scene where Mullins and Ashburn go undercover, it started becoming a vehicle of fun until the end. I actually didn’t expect it because I wasn’t sold before in the trailers. There are many LOL scenes to enjoy in the film like Mullins showing her unusual method of interrogation. I really laughed loudly during that scene. Feig also successfully manage to put in sentimental moments to help the audience to quite understand the two main characters not extensively but just the right amount.
Overall, the movie owes a lot of credit to both Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy’s comical delivery to save the day. By the time the film closes, you’ll enjoy it so much that it’s easy to forgive its typicality.
—————
About the movie reviewer:
Orange Magazine TV‘s newest film critic is a self-confessed movie geek. John Albert Villanueva love movies so much, he watch every movies from the big screen and collects DVDs of classic movies. Read his other review here and here.
