Bullock and McCarthy turn up The Heat

Buddy movies with two male actors are a dime a dozen. Think The Odd Couple, Lethal Weapon, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Silver Streak, The Sting, 48 Hours, 21 Jump Street or anything with Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, Hope & Crosby or Martin & Lewis. They all have in common two strong male characters, sometimes working together, sometimes a comically mismatched pair. Now think about how many female buddy movies there are … Thelma & Louise comes to mind as a modern Butch & Sundance but the list is really slim compared to male buddy movies.

Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy aim to change that with their new buddy comedy The Heat. In the film, they play the typical mismatched pair of police officers thrown together to handle a case. Bullock plays Sarah Ashburn, a straight-laced, uptight, by-the-book FBI agent who does her job very well (some might call her a competitive over-achiever) and McCarthy plays Shannon Mullins, an almost rogue Boston cop who takes no guff from anyone, including her superiors. Ashburn, in line for a major promotion but disliked by just about everyone she works with, is sent to Boston to help crack a major drug case. She immediately treads on Mullins’ turf by interviewing a perp Mullins just brought in, who coincidentally has ties to the case. Since Mullins knows the turf better than Ashburn, they are assigned to work together, of course, they eventually find some common ground.

When I first saw the trailer and various TV ads for The Heat, I was thinking that this movie did not look all that funny. Usually the trailer has all the best moments in it and the film as a whole is always a letdown. I was pleasantly surprised, however, that the movie is actually very funny and the credit goes mainly to the two leads. The story itself is nothing new, and the basic situation is nothing new, but having the comedic talents of Bullock and McCarthy working the material – and making things funny that probably wouldn’t be if the leads were male – makes the movie all the more watchable. Both actresses play to their strengths: Bullock is the more prim and proper of the two while McCarthy is the sloppy, profane one (the use of the F-word certainly rivals that of the South Park movie and earns the film its R-rating). It’s nothing we haven’t seen either of them do in previous films, and on their own it could have become tiresome, especially in McCarthy’s case, but the chemistry between the two makes for comedy gold.

It’s also nice to see some familiar faces among the supporting cast – Tony Hale, Thomas F. Wilson, Michael Tucci, and a criminally under-used Jane Curtin – as well as actors like Marlon Wayans, Michael Rapapaport, Taran Killam and Michael McDonald in larger roles. And yes, that is New Kids on the Block’s Joey McIntyre as one of McCarthy’s younger brothers. Everyone does a fine job, from Wayans’ agent who is slightly smitten with Ashburn to the broad BAHSTON Mullins family members (the scene with the family asking Ashburn if she’s a “nahk” is quite funny … well, maybe not so much to actual Boston residents). Director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) knows how to make comedies with female leads work well, and he keeps the pace moving and the timing to perfection.

But what really makes the material work is the chemistry of Bullock and McCarthy. You’d be hard-pressed to think of two actors who could play these roles and work off of each other as well as they do. The Heat may feature the same comedy tropes that we’ve seen in male buddy movies like 48 Hours, but putting females into those traditional roles actually makes the situations fresh again.