Runtime: 1 hour, 57 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Paul Feig
Quick Impressions:
Too many movies come out in the summer. I can’t keep up. I still want to see Much Ado About Nothing, The Bling Ring, and White House Down, but this week, we chose The Heat because it’s so hard to watch R-rated comedies at home. Unless I want to watch something that’s hard R or NC-17 alone at three o’clock in the morning (and I don’t because that’s when I write), seeing it in the theater is really my only option.
Of course, as I was telling my mother after the movie, The Heat isn’t really as objectionable as its rating suggests. “We probably could watch this one on Blu-ray,” I reported. Immediately, my four-year-old demanded, hands-on-hips, “So why didn’t you take me?”
Don’t get the wrong idea. This is definitely not a movie for young children. But in terms of R-rated comedies, it’s much tamer than, say, This is the End. The R must be mainly for language (and while the stream of four-letter words is fairly constant, the language is not really that much worse than what you might overhear playing video games with me). The movie isn’t trying to be envelope-pushing in its crudeness. The characters dish out run-of-the-mill obscenities, not the kind of soul-shattering blasphemy or offensive name calling you hope your children never hear. Again, I’m not saying, “Take
your children.” I’m just noting that this is one of the least offensive R-rated comedies I’ve seen in some time.
Actually the movie is very sweet as well as amusing. The laughs aren’t constant, but when they come, they’re big. And because of the arresting characters (both comedically exaggerated and oddly sympathetic thanks to strong lead performances by Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy), the story is consistently engaging even though the plot is pretty by-the-numbers.
The Heat does not even try to hide that it’s your basic buddy cop movie, a subgenre far from novel but, nevertheless, enduring and pervasive because it usually works. Just plug in the right pair of cops, and the audience will come. Basically as long as it advances at an adequate pace, the plot hardly matters. The real story is the developing dynamic between the characters, who should grow as individuals because of their evolving relationship.
I’ve seen a lot of buddy cop movies in my day, and most of them are worse than this one (especially Turner and Hooch). Granted, the sheer number of buddy cop movies out there works to the film’s statistical advantage, but still, The Heat is a lot of fun, and I’ll definitely be back for the sequel (as long as McCarthy and Bullock are, and I hope the rest of the cast returns as well).
And as an added bonus, The Heat comes with its own drinking game. (Trust me, I’m not inventing it. I’m discovering it.) Every time Sandra Bullock’s Sarah Ashburn mistakes a random Bostonian barfly for Melissa McCarthy’s Shannon Mullins, you drink three shots. Do all the guys in Boston’s seedy underbelly ask their barbers for “a Mullins” (kind of like girls asking for “a Rachel” in the mid-90s)? Maybe right now that question doesn’t make sense, but I assure you that after you’ve played the drinking game, nothing will. (In fact, if you’re still breathing after that, then there’s a good chance Sarah Ashburn thinks you’re Shannon Mullins.)
The Good:
I’m starting to think that Paul Feig is a really good director. (Of course, Bridesmaids was great, but it was hard to know how much of that was Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s screenplay. I never saw Unaccompanied Minors, and I didn’t even realize until now that Feig directed so many episodes of Arrested Development, not to mention the “Cleveland” episode of 30 Rock and a slew of other quality TVs shows!)
The reason I praise Feig specifically is that not only is the movie good, but almost every scene featuring a supporting character left me thinking, “I want to see more of that person.” After that happens enough times, you begin to suspect that the director knows how to coax the best performances from his cast. And (even more importantly) that he (working closely, of course, with the editor) also knows how to recognize those exceptional moments and keep them in the movie.
The Heat uses its good cast to great advantage.
Spoken Reasons is by far the most outstanding member of the supporting ensemble. (He’s so good, in fact, that I planned to save him for last, but I got too excited and couldn’t wait that long.) It’s always gratifying when somebody relatively unknown manages to make a big impression in a small supporting role, but to say that this guy lights up the screen is an almost insulting understatement. I can’t remember the last time I saw such focused, well-directed, and abundant energy. Clearly Spoken Reasons wants to be a huge star, and unless an asteroid hits the planet tomorrow and wipes out all movie-going life, he will be. I have never seen anybody maximize every second of screen time the way Reasons does in his performance here. He does not waste even one second. If he is on the screen, he is making the most of it, trying to ensure that the audience will laugh at his jokes and remember him as a consistent and exciting young talent. I did not know his name before I saw it in the closing credits. (Is he a poet? I wondered. He is.) Now that I’m home, I see that he’s already gotten a lot of people’s attention on his YouTube channel. Well, now he’s got my attention, too. He’s a rising star for sure.
Casting Marlon Wayans in a comedy as a low-key, serious character is a great idea, even better in the movie than it probably seemed on paper. Wayans shows a very attractive dramatic side that audiences don’t get to see often enough. He’s a very handsome man, actually, and makes a wonderful potential love interest and a believable career-driven law enforcement officer. My only complaint is that his character doesn’t get to do more, but hopefully, we’ll see him again in a sequel.
Ever since his Best Actor Oscar nomination for A Better Life, I’ve been dying to see more of Demián Bichir. I must say, I enjoy hearing him speak English—I’m a sucker for accents—and I think it’s cool that the movie makes a joke not out of his Mexican heritage but out of Ashburn’s cringe-worthily awkward attempts to acknowledge her respect for it. (Maybe you’re thinking, Why would anyone’s Mexican heritage be a joke? Well, don’t ask me why, but just think how often movies offer us a pointedly ethnic supporting character, and how often that character’s use of his native language or his accent or his habits are presented to audiences in a vaguely comical way. I recall roughly a bazillion movies like this that I saw as a child. On the flip side, I also think it’s kind of weird when movies ask us to pretend that an actor with a key role does not have a strong accent.
It’s the rare Arnold Schwartzenegger movie, for example, that acknowledges that he talks like that because he’s Austrian and grew up speaking a different language. Kindergarten Cop mentions it, but only so Pamela Reed can cause zany hilarity by pretending to be his Austrian sister.) Anyway, my point is, I think Bichir plays a cool character, equal parts likable and mysterious (which is useful for the plot), and his performance here is so different from his turn in A Better Life that I’m eager to see more of his work. (It’s also fun to watch him trying not to laugh as Bullock interrupts a meeting because his choking back laughter looks genuine.)
Taran Killam (clearly talented and criminally underutilized on SNL) also gets one of his best roles to date in The Heat, and he definitely makes the most of it. (His partner Dan Bakkedahl is pretty good, too, although sometimes he’s a little much for me.)
The character of Tatiana is not terribly significant. She doesn’t have the best lines or anything particularly memorable to do. But let me assure you that Kaitlin Olson is amazing. She has wonderful charisma, great screen presence, and excellent comic timing (particularly for someone playing a character who’s only there so that the two leads have a reason to interact with one another). I’ve somehow managed to remain oblivious to her entire career up to this point, but I assure you that will not be the case anymore.
Thomas S. Wilson as Captain Woods is like that, too. His part is not very large, but he’s very, very funny. Some of his tortured silences are more amusing than other people’s entire monologues.
It’s also really nice to see Michael Rapaport in a substantial role again. Maybe I just haven’t been watching the right stuff, but I feel like I haven’t seen him in quality film role in fifty million years. He and McCarthy have great chemistry together and their relationship packs an emotional punch so that even in moments when we’re not laughing, the audience still cares about what’s happening to the characters.
As for the two stars, McCarthy and Bullock are both very good in this movie. Both women are funny, and both also handle their more dramatic moments quite well. Watching, I definitely identified with both Ashburn and Mullins (Mullins chiefly when she was trying to get out of her parked car—and try it when there’s a child in carseat involved some time—and Ashburn in her realization that making friends is so much more difficult than achieving career success. It’s easy to reach a clearly defined goal but much harder to guess when other people will stop liking you.)
The Heat also has a wonderful sense of economy that I admire and assume is rooted in Katie Dippold’s screenplay. In an early scene, we see Bullock’s Sarah Ashburn idly flipping through TV channels on a lonely night at home. Every single thing that flashes across her TV screen for a few seconds shows up again later. The Foul Play stuff is particularly clever since the most glaringly obvious reference is not the only joke.
I also really loved the movie’s soundtrack. It’s hard not to enjoy yourself when the The Heat’s background music seems optimized for fun.
Funniest Action Sequence:
By far my favorite scene in the entire movie is the chase beside the fruit cart. Just the other day, a friend was saying to me how well Melissa McCarthy pulls off physical comedy. In general, I have to agree. Few things are more painful to watch than failed slapstick, but McCarthy has a definite gift for making physical humor (sometimes even simple pratfalls) absolutely hilarious. And the fruit cart scene in particular is amazing.
It’s funny on several levels. For one thing, given the dynamic Mullins and Rojas immediately develop, the way she ultimately takes him down is so bizarrely hilarious (particularly because it’s fun to anticipate his response). But most of the humor comes from an extremely intuitive place. You know it’s funny mainly because you’re laughing so hard, and who cares why. Spoken Reasons is really fun to watch. He doesn’t do anything half way, and neither does Melissa McCarthy. They make the whole thing look so easy, but they’re both pouring so much energy into their performances. I can’t remember the last time I saw two hilarious performers so totally committed to such a physical scene. Tony Hale is also a scream as he runs away. (He has a pretty great moment with McCarthy a little earlier, too, when he reflects on how much worse he could have made things.)
There are lots of other hilarious moments in the movie, but this one alone was worth the price of admission to me. I definitely did not expect to see anything like it.
Best Scene Visually:
One of the best jokes in the entire movie is the picture on Sarah Ashburn’s refrigerator. And not only is it on the refrigerator, it’s framed on an end table in the other room, as well. And it’s the only picture in the entire apartment. (And I first began to appreciate the screenplay the moment we saw the live inspiration for this photo in one of Sandra Bullock’s relatively early scenes. The visual there is not the joke. The joke comes later. But the visual is like an advanced punchline.)
Another really great visual moment comes when McCarthy adjusts Bullock’s pose on the gurney.
Best Scene:
Honestly my favorite scene is the bit with the fruit cart. You don’t see that in the preview, and I wasn’t expecting it at all.
This movie features a number of excellent scenes, truth be told, but one of my favorite moments comes when Melissa McCarthy’s Mullins suddenly turns serious (and becomes a bit vulnerable) as she begins thinking about her brother in the car.
McCarthy is absolutely fearless when it comes to physical comedy, and that’s probably the main reason for her relatively sudden success in movies. But I think her long TV career owes its legs to how quickly and compellingly she transitions from comedy to drama. Not only does she make the dramatic moments seem real, not only does she make her characters compelling and sympathetic, but she always seems to blindside us with these intensely vulnerable, dramatic revelations. One minute, she’s a wise-cracking, prat-falling, comedic force of nature, and then suddenly she transforms into this soft, sweet, beautiful woman with deep, complex feelings that she seems to project directly (and for the most part, non-verbally) into the soul of each audience member.
Another truly great scene, though, comes when McCarthy threatens Michael McDonald (playing Julien) with an exciting variation on Russian roulette. It’s great because all three actors involved play it perfectly. Bullock is funnier than McCarthy in this scene, and the intensity of McDonald’s reaction is also superb. (The inverse of the scene is also quite
compelling and another strong candidate for best scene.)
Funniest Scene:
McCarthy has the best part in this movie. Bullock is an equally talented actress, and herself quite the charismatic charmer, but The Heat seems designed to showcase McCarthy.
(By the way, to weigh in on Rex Reed’s disparaging comments in his Identity Thief review—which are still in the back of my mind, probably because it’s the first time Reed has crossed my mind in at least ten years—I think it’s pretty clear that McCarthy is such a success not because she makes her weight a gimmick but because she doesn’t. I think audiences respond to her confidence because it’s refreshing to see a character in a Hollywood movie (particularly a woman) who has the confidence to recognize her strengths rather than letting others define her by what they perceive as her weaknesses. By the way, this is not because most women have no self-confidence, it’s because until recently Hollywood has not realized that creating star vehicles for confident, self-defined women would result in studios making a profit.)
Anyway, McCarthy is definitely funny, but Bullock does own one of the very funniest moments in The Heat, and I’m talking about the thing with the grenade, fairly late in the film. She’s so awesome in that scene, and I’m calling it out as particularly funny because I’ve seen it a million times. It’s in every trailer. Yet when I watched it tonight (and here the movie doesn’t differ at all from the preview), it still filled me with incredible joy.
The Negatives:
One unfortunate weakness that The Heat can’t really avoid—because it’s a downfall of its premise—is that casting Sandra Bullock as an uptight, socially awkward, stiffly self-conscious perfectionist forces Bullock to play an uptight, socially awkward, stiffly self-conscious perfectionist for at least eighty percent of the film. She’s a good actress. She does it well. But the biggest reason that Bullock became a star in the first place is her seemingly effortless, quirky, confident, girl-next-door persona. I can think of few people who can top the easy charm of Sandra Bullock, and she’s forbidden from showing it
here for the majority of the movie. Don’t get me wrong. She’s still very funny. To her credit, she manages to get laughs even when playing the straight man by making jokes that the audience gets even though her character doesn’t.
But it’s still kind of a shame. When Ashburn has a big breakthrough (or breakdown depending on your point of view) in the final act, and Bullock is finally allowed to loosen up, the amount of charm she is suddenly permitted to unleash is beyond staggering. It’s a shame that she has to spend so much of the movie withholding that gift from the audience, but that’s definitely a problem that would diminish naturally in a sequel.
Jane Curtain is such a talented comedienne, and she has almost nothing to do here. It’s nice to see her, and maybe we’ll see more of her in deleted scenes (just guessing), but the part she’s given isn’t worthy of her talents. (Don’t get me wrong, Mullins’s grudge-holding mother is an important role, but it just doesn’t translate into much significant screen time.)
I’d love to see more of Curtain in a sequel (but only if there’s reason for her to be there). Since Curtain has such a small part, it’s hard not to regret that they didn’t hire her one-time SNL co-star Chevy Chase to play Mullins’s father instead or maybe Goldie Hawn for a brief cameo as the mother. It’s just that the movie already seems to be having such an interesting conversation with Foul Play, and Jane Curtain has hardly anything to do anyway.
Honestly for me Mullins’s family was the least appealing part of the movie (not the dramatic storyline, the way they were used as comic relief). If I were from Boston, I might be insulted. As it is, I just think that a lot of the humor there was lazy. Also, it’s one thing to skewer Bostonians if you are one of them, so when Mark Wahlberg or Ben Affleck does it, it somehow feels different. But if screenwriter Katie Dippold does have some special tie to Boston, I haven’t been able to discover it (and I’d wager that most people who buy tickets to this film are not even aware of Katie Dippold). I also personally think there’s sometimes more genuine, authentic (feeling at least) humor in The Fighter or Gone Baby, Gone (which is definitely not a comedy) than we see in the family scenes here.
As I’ve said before, too, although the laughs are big, the movie does not provide constant laughter. Some of Bullock and McCarthy’s early scenes together feel more tiresome than hilarious. Sometimes their bickering drags on a little too long with too little payoff. (As the movie goes on, however, this happens less and less).
Overall:
I hear The Heat is getting a sequel, and I’ll definitely buy a ticket. This movie is a lot of fun. I left the theater in such a good mood, and I just realized that if I mention every single thing I liked in this review, I’ll never finish writing it and never get to go to sleep! The Heat is probably not as good as Bridesmaids, but it’s also nowhere near as depressing. If you like Sandra Bullock or Melissa McCarthy or buddy cop movies or you want to become a fan of Spoken Reasons, you should definitely buy a ticket for The Heat.