Film Review: "The Heat"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 27 June 2013 04:00

Written by Matt Oakes

"The Heat"
Directed by Paul Feig
Starring Melissa McCarthy, Sandra Bullock, Demián Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Michael Rapaport, Thomas F. Wilson, Tony Hale, Kaitlin Olson
Action, Comedy, Crime
117 Mins
R

After working on television series such as The Office, Weeds and Bored to Death, director Paul Feig emerged as a voice for a very particular brand of female comedy with Bridesmaids that has extended somewhat over into The Heat, but the ruse is up. Attempting to subvert status quo, Feig has executed a whitewash rebranding of the female comedy, collapsing gender norms and racial stereotypes into a generic mass so indistinct and overextending that it'll be a miracle if he hasn't set back the female comedy 20 years. While there are genuine moments of laugh-out-loud comedy to be had throughout, the female buddy cop angle is overdone and coated in a saccharine glaze. Top that off with a ceaseless dose of broad and overbearing comedy, a total of exactly 190 useless f-bombs and "action" situations so fantastical that the sense of stakes melts in your mouth like a filet mignon and you have a film just beating you over the head with a dead fish to the point of surrender.

When asked in a New York press conference whether this film was a sort of unofficial sequel to Miss Congeniality, Sandra Bullock promptly stated, "Hell no. The only similarities is that there’s a gun." I'm sorry to correct you Ms. Bullock, but the similarities do not end there. First off, both characters are FBI agents struggling to fit in in order to bag the big baddie, characters who need to have their looks altered in some way in order to do accomplish their ultimate goal. To me, that is a very specific breed of film - one that sucks. To her credit, there are two big differences: Melissa McCarthy and a hard-R rating.

Backtracking to the beginning of the story, we meet special agent Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) on a bust. She's the leader of an FBI task force and despite her glimmering track record, she commands no respect from the troops at her disposal. Whether this general disregard stems from her being a woman or because she's a showboating, social pariah is unclear but it seems as if there is supposed to be an air of injustice behind the lack of obedience headed her way. Either way, her character is as obnoxious as she is uptight from the get-go and the 117-minute endurance test begins.

After learning that her immediate superior (Demián Bichir) is getting bumped up, leaving a coveted upper management position within the FBI, Ashburn is told that despite of her golden girl portfolio, she is most likely going to be passed up for the promotion because, well, no one likes her. And so begins her mission to "fit in" and become a passably tolerable human being as she investigates a big profile drug case in Boston.

Over in Beantown, the top dog cop is McCarthy's Mullins; an air sucking, f-bomb spitting mess of a woman cloaked in dirty rags and working the streets. Our first vulgarity-overboard encounter with Mullins is revealing with respect to her character. Mullins is scoping out a local prostitute ring when she spots a John just waiting to be shaken down. Tony Hale (or, as you know him, Buster from Arrested Development) only gets a minute or two on screen as The John but in that quick glimpse offers up more laughs than his starring counterpart McCarthy.

After a brief encounter where Ashburn "steals" Mullins parking spot and Mullins is forced to inchworm crawl through a series of open windows (which is supposed to be funny because she's fat!), we see the rivals-to-friends formula laid out with the simplicity of a doghouse blueprint. But still, none of the jokes are landing.

It feels impossible to point a finger in one direction or the other about the largely laugh-free nature of the first chunk of the beast as this is no cut and dry case of the script failing the actors or the actors failing the script, it's just a combination of bad choices. The comedy at play is simply overbearing and scattershot and the performances backing it up are, for the most part, nothing short of obnoxious. McCarthy, in particular, sprays jokes like a drunken machine gun operator or a blind boxer taking swings in the dark and only hits the target ten percent of the time. Having said that, when the jokes do finally land, they muster some much needed laughs.

From the fiery conscious streaming from McCarthy's unbound persona comes mile-a-minute vulgarity, off-the-wall asides and some genuinely funny commentary. Even Bullock managed to pull off a nice little zinger of a "tongue and cheek" pun but this is largely McCarthy's show. Her biggest problem is she just doesn't know when to stop.

Cursing strictly for the sake of cursing is not clever comedy nor is it funny and it actually stands in the way of McCarthy's more witty moments. I'm still amongst those absolutely dumbfounded by McCarthy's Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role in Bridesmaids but I do think that she has the potential to be a rather funny leading lady. That being said, she's standing in her own way. You shouldn't have to dig through a barrel of misfires to find the jokes that work. You mine the gold and toss the rest. Surely this could be a problem siphoned off into the editing room barrel but McCarthy needs to know her limits. Her unhindered crassness and vulgarity are training wheels. Comic timing may be in her favor but the side effects certainly include a headache. Using McCarthy like a fire hose to put out a brush fire, Feig has squandered the comic potential of The Heat.

Even though the end result isn't quite the lemon that the first act suggested, there is just far too much in the black to mark this off as a success or anything worthy of suggesting to a friend. There are just too many instances of plain dumb writing that offend our presumably intelligent sensibilities. Perhaps the most egregious example is when Ashburn shows Mullins a file for a moment and then when Mullins asks to see it again, Ashburn informs her that she doesn't have clearance. Why is she showing her the file and then saying she doesn't have clearance? It just doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, it's not the only blaring plot hole in a film so torn apart that it resembles a shot up Compton corner shop.

In the noxious and obligatorily 'We're best friends now!" scene, Bullock stands up for McCarthy in front of the other officers and says she's the best damn cop around. At this point, I guess we're expected to forget that McCarthy literally hit a black guy with her car for smoking marijuana and then threw a watermelon at him and said, and I quote, "Don't you make me feed this to you." If this is the standard, nay the apex, of the Boston PD, I won't be returning to Boston anytime soon.

By far, the film's largest problem is that when it's not funny, it's annoying. It's like watching a game made up solely of Hail Mary's that shows no sign of restraint or cleverness in its tireless slog to the goal line. Between the gross-out-gags, screaming, swearing, shoving and whining, The Heat is a big baby swaddled up in it's own thick, stinky layer of emotional cheese. Had Feig cut down about 40 or more minutes in the editing room, he actually may have transformed this into something with more energy and axed most of the DOA jokes but, the way it is, this lifeless piece bobs and sinks.

D+

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