Film: The Heat
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demián Bichir, Marlon Wayans
Director: Paul Feig
It’s a chick flick, an action movie and a comedy rolled into one. Normally that would spell a recipe for disaster, but Paul Feig seems to have done the balancing act rather well. Although it is a movie that would go down better with a male audience – or an audience with a taste for the risqué – woman power is the theme of this film. Well, that, and the regular fat-thin-duo brand of comedy that has been around since Laurel and Hardy.
Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) plays an FBI agent who cannot work well with other people. She’s uptight, stubborn and unwilling to compromise on anything. If the role had starred a male actor, it would have been a cliché. But Bullock seems to have done a good job of playing the femme version of the neurotic staple.
She’s sent to Boston to work on a narcotics case, where she finds that her first lead involves Detective Shannon Mullins’ (Melissa McCarthy) prisoner. Mullins (because all cops are addressed only by their last names) is exactly the same as Ashburn (only a tad more…umm, corpulent).
Normally, I would hate a movie like this, but I found myself laughing at nearly all the jokes. I suppose the more politically correct among us would brand several racist or sexist – but then, almost all movies that involve the Wayans brothers are that way, aren’t they? The Heat doesn’t quite cross the line, except for a possible excess of profanity.
The parodies on the idiosyncrasies of a typical Boston family are a delight, especially those involving the Boston accent. Although it is an overkilled concept, the jokes in this movie appear new, and the gags don’t drag. That is one of the best aspects of the film – the most important thing is that none of the refrain-like jokes that one would encounter in a typical movie of this genre are used injudiciously. There’s enough for the filmmakers to get the laughs, and they resist from laying it on thickly enough to induce groans. One particularly well-timed set piece involves the anatomy of Mullins’ boss.
The soundtrack, which consists largely of classics that haven’t been played in a while or used much in cinema, deserves a special mention. The songs are used to good effect in this movie.
However, The Heat doesn’t entirely sidestep all the pitfalls its genre is prone to.
The only major put-off about what could have been an entirely enjoyable caper is that the scriptwriters have tried to force in a dollop of sentiment. Sadly, they have brought it in at the wrong points. The overall story arc is predictable, except for a minor twist at the end, which is a bit out of the blue.