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I Watch Movies: The Heat
Jul. 14th, 2013 07:08 pmI have been cheering for Melissa McCarthy's career as she has hit megastardom through Mike & Molly and Bridesmaids. With due respect to her, the way Hollywood works now, she didn't really need another Identity Theft-like flop.
The set-up is about as basic as you get- McCarthy is loud, messy and crude, Sandra Bullock is overly straight-laced to the point that she annoys everyone. It's a buddy cop/mismatch movie, the template that we've seen over and over, but it still works (for example, last year's 21 Jump Street), and in this case, no new ground is broken- McCarthy playing a character that we've seen a few times and Bullock recalling Miss Congeniality.
It all works though, which is what we care about. It's the funniest movie I have seen in awhile (which if you recall, has been quite a few comedy duds) and is doing well in the theaters appropriately.
A big reason this works is that the characters have a lot of heart and are empathetic, which is where this goes right and Identity went wrong.
There is a lot of filthy language in the film, and at the risk of sounding like a prude, it probably isn't all necessary. Also, as a friend noted, the film is pretty much start-to-finish funny, but you don't walk out quoting any lines from it (Mccarthy's lengthy diatribes are probably the funniest things in the film).
Overall, this is a pretty standard case of what you see is what you get, but if you are looking for a basic screwball comedy, what I call weekend entertainment, this is it, and it succeeds. I liked it much better than Identity Theft (no surprise there) and even better than Bridesmaids (which just wasn't consistently funny enough for me). The mismatch buddy comedy lives.
The set-up is about as basic as you get- McCarthy is loud, messy and crude, Sandra Bullock is overly straight-laced to the point that she annoys everyone. It's a buddy cop/mismatch movie, the template that we've seen over and over, but it still works (for example, last year's 21 Jump Street), and in this case, no new ground is broken- McCarthy playing a character that we've seen a few times and Bullock recalling Miss Congeniality.
It all works though, which is what we care about. It's the funniest movie I have seen in awhile (which if you recall, has been quite a few comedy duds) and is doing well in the theaters appropriately.
A big reason this works is that the characters have a lot of heart and are empathetic, which is where this goes right and Identity went wrong.
There is a lot of filthy language in the film, and at the risk of sounding like a prude, it probably isn't all necessary. Also, as a friend noted, the film is pretty much start-to-finish funny, but you don't walk out quoting any lines from it (Mccarthy's lengthy diatribes are probably the funniest things in the film).
Overall, this is a pretty standard case of what you see is what you get, but if you are looking for a basic screwball comedy, what I call weekend entertainment, this is it, and it succeeds. I liked it much better than Identity Theft (no surprise there) and even better than Bridesmaids (which just wasn't consistently funny enough for me). The mismatch buddy comedy lives.
