The Heat: Script’s Stiff Plot Feels Obligatory

In 2011, Paul Feig, Krisen Wiig and Annie Mumolo brought us Bridesmaids, an answer to The Hangover and, despite (or, perhaps because of) its producer, the Apatow comedies of mid-00's, proving that raunchy R-rated comedies were not exclusively reserved for the He-Man Woman Haters Club.

Cashing in on the freedom that came along with that Oscar-nominated box-office smash, Feig has chosen to bring The Heat to life. A script from Parks & Recreation writer Katie Dippold, The Heat is an answer to 30+ years of buddy cop films, attempting to prove that the wacky concoction of the by-the-books straight one and the outside-the-lines wild one does not require a Y chromosome.

While that might be the case, The Heat would not and should not be Exhibit A in the case to prove it. Yes, they got the straight-laced half of the dynamic duo in FBI Special Agent Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) and the wild card second half in Boston PD Detective Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) who are brought together by a thin plot device that somehow involves a drug dealer in Boston and yes, both of them have both personal and professional success on the line pending the outcome of the thinly incited case, but fulfillment of genre conventions like these and others on display (try and guess if the pair gets suspended from the case or if there is or isn't a mole in the department) are simply par for the course, stiffly coursed plot points so simple in their execution that it's hard for any part of this buddy cop comedy to feel anything but obligatory.

Well, that's not entirely true. The one thing The Heat has that few other comedies have had in the last few years is a bright shining star that goes by the name of Melissa McCarthy. Her Detective Mullins, with inner city Boston roots that manifest in multiple profanity-filled tirades, is not just the highlight of the film—it’s the film’s entire spine. Without McCarthy's gut-busting one-liners, there'd be very little worth remembering. Her performance and presence are so bombastic that it actually elevates the otherwise pedestrian performance of Bullock, whose straight woman role is actually somehow improved by being appropriately unremarkable.

The success of Bridesmaids contrasted with the solitary bright spot of The Heat reveals a glaring weakness in Feig as a director: a reliance on a solid cast and great performances rather than anything inherent within him to bring a film to another level. Feig's name is in the credits as the director, but it really could've been any number of comedy directors from the past few years that brought The Heat to the big screen—Jay Roach, David Dobkin, Nicholas Stoller, etc. Granted, none of their previous films signaled a huge step forward for the breaking down of cinematic gender conventions, but that actually makes what Feig did, or more accurately, didn't do, with The Heat all the more unforgiving. And it's actually quite a shame that The Heat is so tepid since it slows whatever momentum that Feig could've built up from with what he started with Bridesmaids.