I’ve been reading John Scalzi’s Comfort Watch reviews all through December, which inspired me to write about some of the movies that end up turned on in my house when we just want to relax for the night.Both my wife and I work in the legal field. The way she’s put it to friends is that “other people’s problems become our problems” and sometimes a movie that you have to think about is the last thing you want. So the “dumb comedy” is a sort of default genre in our house. Because there are days when thinking is hard.The Heat is a buddy cop movie that stars two of my wife’s and my favorite actresses: Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. If I continue to write more about movies watched at the end of a long day, both of them would probably show up at least five more times each. And, honestly, that’s part of the charm of the buddy cop genre, you throw together two actors and two characters where each could totally hold their own in a different movie. And Act One gives you suggestions about what movie each of those would have been.Sandra Bullock plays a tight-laced FBI Agent. Which, as I think over Miss Congeniality, Demolition Man, and A Time to Kill, the grounded, tight-laced, do-gooder is definitely a type-cast. She’s looking toward getting a promotion, but her Type A ambitious nature and tendency to one up other agents leads her boss to having doubts about her ability to work well with others.Melissa McCarthy plays a Boston PD officer for whom loose cannon is perhaps even a generous phrasing. Her opening scene has her threatening to break a John’s hand while on the phone with his wife to tell her what he’s up to then running down a drug dealer with that same John handcuffed in the backseat. He then escapes out a window while she wrestles with the drug dealer.The two end up thrown together when the dealer McCarthy’s Mullens has arrested turns out to be connected to a major trafficking case that Bullock’s Ashburn gets assigned to in a “do well and we’ll talk about the promotion” situation. The two initially get along just as well as you expect.The movie is directed by Paul Feig, as are a lot of McCarthy’s movies. His direction style is kind of an “it either works for you or it doesn’t” and a lot of the style is present here. There are bits where it feels like a line was maybe only sketched out and then handed to McCarthy or to Bullock to try out a few ways and we’ll just take the best improv line that came out of the effort as the one that goes in the movie.For me, it works though. Bullock plays a fantastic straight man to McCarthy, giving breath to the ad libs through her exasperation. Through the magic of the buddy cop movie, Ashburn comes to lighten up a bit and Mullens pulls it together just a little.The movie basically hits all the buddy cop beats one by one right where you’d expect. There’s only one big twist and that’s even more just a surprise and not something to spend time thinking over.For me, those things make it work fantastically for the kind of night you just want to share a drink with someone close to you, have some laughs, and not think about it too hard. And The Heat works great for that sort of movie.
