The Heat (2013) Review: Unfunny and Off-putting

Melissa McCarthy keeps the film upbeat while Sandra Bullock proves to be a capable foil. Their chemistry delivers some laughs but it’s not enough to save this movie.

McCarthy plays the schlub crazy cop, a male archetype in the form of the loud-mouthed,  gun hoarding, boisterous Shannon Mullins who uses the same sexist insults.

Bullock plays her character leftover from Miss Congeniality, the opposite female archetype in the form of uptight Sarah Ashburn. She’s so dedicated to her career that she became a cat lady who doesn’t even have her own cat and resorts to taking pictures with it against fake backgrounds.

The two are in a barely-there story and a predictable plot. The comedic pieces run too long. The film delivers laughs using the obnoxious Mullins and her shtick gets repetitive and off-putting.

The production value is so low that it couldn’t even manage one decent explosion.

The rest of the cast is one dimensional. Its Always Sunny resident Kaitlin Olson is underused.

The most disappointing part is instead of taking the opportunity to subvert gender stereotypes as a female buddy cop film, the Heat repeats it.

In one scene the pair could have prepared before going to the club, but that wouldn’t give the film an opportunity to make fun of Ashburn’s “masculine” clothing, even though she’s decently dressed for an FBI agent.

Her identity crisis is solved by following the footsteps of Mullins, and together they win by emulating men. The misogynistic albino cop gets a shot in the head and the villain, revealed in a standard plot twist, is shot in the dick.

The Heat is really just an average male buddy cop film, except it’s sold as a female centric movie.