If you ever wondered what it would be like if Miss Congeniality met Bridesmaids, the resulting film would be The Heat. It makes sense as the director, Paul Feig, directed both Bridesmaids and The Heat.
The Heat is the first female buddy cop movie and a great movie to see if you’re looking for a new ab workout. A laugh-riot from start to finish, the film focuses on the efforts of straight-laced FBI agent Sarah Ashbury (portrayed by Sandra Bullock) to dirty it up with pure-Boston born and bred police woman Shannon Mullins (portrayed by Melissa McCarthy).
Much of the film’s plot centers in on how different the two women are and how they’ve always been lone-wolf types who needed no one else. At the open of the film, we see how Ashbury is smarter than the average FBI agent, but not well-liked by her co-workers. If she wants a promotion, her boss (played by Oscar nominee Demián Bichir) tells her she needs to learn to work well with others. He sends her to Boston to solve a murder spree involving a new drug lord taking over Beantown.
Our introduction to Mullins is a little more jarring, seeing her take down not only a man soliciting a working girl, but also a low-level drug dealer named Rojas (played by Spoken Reasons). Both arrests showcase her personal flavor of no mercy violence and an excess of profane language. As she heads to the station to question the drug dealer, she loses her parking spot to Ashbury (which if you have ever been to Boston is bad) and the table is set for the hate part of the love-hate relationship at the core of The Heat.
Mullins storms through the precinct, berating and stripping her boss’s man card (portrayed by Back to the Future’s Thomas F. Wilson) and our two main characters finally meet face-to-face. The two butt heads immediately, with Mullins stealing Ashbury’s car keys, and then the case file of the drug lord. The two decide to work together, using Ashbury’s perfect book smarts and Mullins’ street smarts and intuition.
From a hurried hotspot club bathroom makeover, the two bug a key distributor’s phone and thus meet the DEA agents working on the same case, one of whom is a misogynistic Albino (played by Dan Bakkedahl) and the other an unassuming straight man-type character (played by SNL’s Taran Killam).
We also find out the Mullins’ brother Jason (played by Michael Rappaport) is a recently released former drug dealer and addict. The catch is that Mullins is the one who put him in jail and as a result, her family is mad at her. Some big names make up her family, including Jane Curtin, New Kid on the Block Joey McIntyre, and Bill Burr. The family portrays a very stereotypical large Irish family with all the loud, talking over each other, fighting out of love image.
Marlon Wayans also appears in the movie as a Boston FBI agent with his eye on Bullock. As far as love stories go, this situation and the running gag of McCarthy leaving a string of ex-lovers all over town is about it. This is a refreshing change from every other female-driven film. It sends the message that having a relationship does not need to be the main thing in a woman’s life.
The writing is funny and fresh as opposed to putting women down, a message the movie very proudly puts on display. This is in large part to writer Katie Dippold’s experience writing for strong female comedic characters on MADtv and Parks and Recreation. This combined with Feig’s experience from Bridesmaids that dirty girl comedy can hit hard makes for a fun romp that ladies everywhere should go to with their best friend. Men shouldn’t be afraid the movie is only for women. The buddy cop plot is something that transcends gender and the humor makes it one of the funniest movies of the summer season.
The Heat is a Twentieth Century Fox, Chernin Entertainment, and Dune Entertainment film, rated R for pervasive language, strong crude content and some violence. The running time is 117 minutes.
