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There is a long tradition of comedians in buddy cop movies -- a tradition to which the 2013 movie The Heat happily belongs.

Sandra Bullock is FBI agent Sarah Ashburn, a Type A personality who's great at her job but insufferable to everyone around her. She's forced to partner with Boston cop Shannon Mullins, played by Melissa McCarthy as a bullish, temperamental slob whose every outburst is a string of profanity and bodily threats.


Despite their differences, the pair must work together to discover the identity of Boston's biggest drug lord and take him down so that Ashburn can get a promotion and Mullins can keep her family safe. Before long, they're tearing through Boston, dropping informants off apartment roofs and performing emergency surgeries in the hopes of getting the bad guys.

Unlike some of its predecessors, which play the cop stuff more or less straight and have the comedian on hand just for the jokes, The Heat is basically played for laughs from beginning to end. It's loaded with supporting performances from other comedians, including Marlon Wayans, Bill Burr, Taran Killam, Thomas Wilson, Jane Curtain and Michael McDonald. The screenplay, by former MAD TV writer Kate Dippold, seems almost totally uninterested in the plot mechanics: there is a drug dealer who has to be stopped, and a chain of people to go through in order to do so, but only in the most vague sense. The characters' motivations are pretty broadly sketched, too, because the movie is much more interested in just getting Bullock and McCarthy on screen together and allowing them to bounce off one another.

At this, it is very good.

 

The Heat is director Paul Feig's follow-up to his 2011 smash hit Bridesmaids, which eventually went on to pick up a couple of Oscar nominations. Like that movie, The Heat is concerned with issues of female friendships and how outside pressures can sometimes put a strain on those relationships that might not otherwise exist. The movie is at its best when Bullock and McCarthy are working together, because they have really good comic chemistry together and because it's a lot more satisfying to watch them united against the world than it is to watch them bicker endlessly. The Heat has a little too much bickering, but it also knows how to use those moments to build towards a believable friendship. When Ashburn and Mullins finally form their sisterly bond, it feels earned.

Though she's in real danger of becoming totally overexposed, it's difficult not to praise Melissa McCarthy's work in the movie. Yes, the shtick is the shtick: she's abrasive and vulgar, swearing every other word and threatening to beat or shoot whoever she is talking to. But she's also very funny, often finding ways to approach the insults beyond the obvious choice. More importantly, McCarthy doesn't shy away from playing the dramatic moments; Mullins has a few beats of genuine emotion, and McCarthy nails them all. It's what makes her a more rounded and interesting character than the standard buddy cop movie template would suggest. Vanderbilt's screenplay is filled with little character beats like that -- Bullock, for example, is a disaster in her lovelife, but former one-night stands keep approaching Mullins and trying to date her again. She's confident and secure, the movie suggests, and men respond to that. It's a nice detail in a movie that has a lot of them. Feig is clearly much more interested in the characters than he is in the plot, which is precisely why The Heat is a good character comedy but a pretty bad cop movie. That's an ok trade.

 

The Heat is not a great movie. It might not even be a great comedy. It's too long by nearly a half hour, and the looseness of the narrative only exacerbates the problem. But it's an excuse for two very funny and talented stars to tear it up on screen together, and works as a buddy cop movie that finally lets women in on the act without forcing reminders of its feminist leanings. The movie might not be able to stand right alongside 48 Hrs., but it sure beats the hell out of something like Cop Out. And in a summer movie season chock full of disappointments, The Heat delivers exactly what we want.

• The Heat is rated R for pervasive language, strong crude content and some violence.
• Running time: 117 minutes
• Release date: 6/28/13