There are
few actresses whose talents and personality I outright adore as strongly as
Sandra Bullock, so imagine my glee when I discovered that she was not only
returning to the cop comedy genre (generating fond memories of 2000’s Miss Congeniality), but she would also
be pairing with Melissa McCarthy. I may
not have been overly fond of February’s Identity
Thief, but I submit that McCarthy is a master of ad-libbing, and her
reunion with Bridesmaids director
Paul Feig had to foreshadow comedy gold.
When the trailers for The Heat
were released, the notion of these two thesps challenging the conventions of
the buddy-cop genre together was so promising that it was easy to ignore the
somewhat nonsensical title and awful release posters. Post-production wasn’t without controversy, mainly
due to the major flak that 20th Century Fox took for
digitally-altering McCarthy’s face in posters to make it appear “thinner,” but
this upcoming comedy film was still highly anticipated and poised for
success. In short, The Heat was going to have to royally screw itself over in order to
generate disdain, so I really could have cared less about depth or narrative
creativity…I was just wanted some fun and clever laughs.
My god,
thanks to The Heat, Sandra Bullock
and Melissa McCarthy have formed what can arguably be classified as one of the
most effective and downright hilarious comedy duos of all time, thereby
generating by far the funniest film that either of the two have made. These two are utterly brilliant and play-off
each other’s differing personalities perfectly, with Bullock acting as the
straight man and setting-up a premise that McCarthy expertly slam-dunks. If you were to strip away all the humor and
focus solely on the narrative, there are some pretty significant weaknesses in
the overly-formulaic and highly-predictable plot, but please remember that a
gripping crime story was never the main selling point. The sheer brilliance of Bullock and McCarthy
together will keep you riveted, and you have to respect the surprisingly
competent moments of action and heart peppered throughout the running
time. Putting it simply, DO NOT MISS The Heat, because it is now the
frontrunner for best comedy of Summer 2013.
