The buddy-cop comedy genre welcomes its latest addition with this hilarious, over-the-top, but endearingly profane film from director Paul Feig ("Bridesmaids").
"The Heat" stars Sandra Bullock ("The Blind Side") as an uptight but intelligent FBI agent and Melissa McCarthy ("The Hangover Part III") as her foul-mouthed, but equally competent, Boston detective partner.
FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) is up for a promotion but her boss Agent Hale (Demian Bichir, "Savages") clarifies to her that no one in their department likes her because of her lack of teamwork and know-it-all attitude.
When she is assigned to work on a case to take down a Russian drug lord, she heads to Boston where she reluctantly partners up with Detective Shannon Mullins, played by McCarthy, whose co-workers are afraid of her offensively profane demeanor and her reckless attitude.
The plot moves quickly through the drug case, but it occasionally slows down to give us strong character development, particularly for Agent Ashburn, who progresses from an arrogant detective to a softer and more personable character.
Mullins' roughness, meanwhile, becomes more understandable once the audience is introduced to her similarly rough-edged family.
While Katie Dippold's ("Parks and Recreation") script doesn't reinvent the genre, the film is aided by the tremendous chemistry between Bullock and McCarthy, each of them balancing the other's strengths and weaknesses.
McCarthy's work here is hilarious, but has a tendency to stretch out the jokes that she borders on becoming obnoxious were it not for Bullock's ability to ground her ridiculousness.
On the other hand, Bullock often appears to be a caricature rather than a real person. McCarthy's outlandish detective gives Bullock's iciness enough contrast that we can understand Agent Ashburn's exasperation.
Also, a boon to the film's success is Fieg's scene direction. The film editing is so smooth even as the action ramps up, except for one scene in the latter part of the film that contained laughably obvious visual effects.
The music choices are particularly keen and don't get in the way of the film's best jokes. Many of the laughs the film earns comes from the simultaneous verbal and visual jokes thrown at you. One in particular sticks to mind- midway through the film, Ashburn and Cullins enter a club to get a target and while Ashburn tries to dance with their target, Cullins manhandles the other girls away.
"The Heat" sometimes goes for the lame joke on Boston accents, spandex and some throwaway gross-out humor that it could do without, but otherwise there are plenty of jokes that are sharp and funny.
Thus, "The Heat" will probably end up becoming one of the highlights of summer 2013.
thescene@theeagleonline.com
