Critics reviews

Certainly less successful than Bridesmaids in terms of story and pacing, Feig's sophomore effort is nonetheless important for finally handing McCarthy a leading role worthy of her charisma and upping the action kinetics that would later be perfected in Spy.

McCarthy is the yin to Sandy's pin-stripe yang, letting it all hang out as the slobby, potty-gobbed local cop Bullock is partnered with. Their onscreen chemistry may take a little while to properly infuse, but when it does, it makes for a fairly unstoppable comedic force...

[...McCarthy's] verbal gifts are more significant than her physicality, even when she uses both at once. Director Paul Feig understands this better than anyone, since McCarthy was the breakout star of his 2011 hit Bridesmaids. He exploits her ornate profanity to great effect again in The Heat, an often-riotous femme twist on the 1980s buddy-cop action-comedy.

The fusion of a sentimental tale of friendship, a mismatched-cop buddy comedy, and a bloody crime story yields a very long movie; the many formulas never mesh, and some formidable actors stumble trying to keep pace with its out-of-synch meters.

The casting of Bullock and McCarthy—who easily play traditionally masculine types, strong-willed and forthright—makes The Heat more than a gimmicky retread of a well-worn genre. They're a female version of Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello: Bullock as the straight man, McCarthy as the baggy-pants comic, both getting into a series of fine messes. These roles are well established in the world of comedy, but it took McCarthy's arrival on the scene for the pairing to be played to the hilt.

The Heat is violent, with some pretty gruesome moments and some questionable police work. That's part of the fun. Cagney and Lacey these two ain't. When they finally join forces, they go rogue with a gusto that is refreshing.

To root for "The Heat" as a feminist breakthrough, you have to reiterate all the same arguments [raised by Bridesmaids], with the proviso that this is a much less interesting and original film – basically a hit-and-miss sketch comedy with some decent laughs but not much plot – trying to reclaim a historically moronic genre that makes the wedding farce look like Shakespeare.

What's most refreshing about The Heat is neither woman is seeking a man, nor does the film end in a wedding or romantic pairing. Instead, the emphasis remains on Ashburn and Mullins' improbable friendship and their career aspirations—two things that rarely take prominence in female-centric stories. Due to this, it's easier to forgive some of The Heat's flaws, as its aim is admirable.

Despite the nonsense, McCarthy and Bullock make sense in physical and temperamental opposition to each other. I'm not a big fan of McCarthy tirades, but here she embodies a completely realized character and not the crapshoot sketch-comedy acting that some movies allow her to get away with. McCarthy's an actress who needs a foil, and for now Bullock is more than good enough. I just wish these two had found each other 10 years ago.

Director Paul Feig... isn't exactly a stylist. But he knows how to relax and encourage the best from his cast, while not entirely forgetting about technique (he shoots in extra-"cinematic" cinemascope, and on film.) Spotty at first, "The Heat" only gets better as the cast loosens into their roles and the gags begin to snowball into something that's worth seeing.

The movie struggles to get laughs from anyone other than McCarthy. Bullock is adequate as a foil, but her task is to play it straight, while some of the peripheral gags (Dan Bakkedahl turning up as a sexist albino DEA agent; Boston-accent jokes involving McCarthy's family, headed by an underused Jane Curtin) play like fallback material. Is a less patchy version of The Heat imaginable? At just shy of two hours, it could stand to pick up the pace. The movie packs heat but not momentum.

Would that director Paul Feig displayed any visual imagination beyond dully flat lighting and yeoman camera setups, or that the film's weird tonal whiplash between ribaldry, sentimentality and extreme violence—a knife to the thigh here, a bullet to the head there—didn't temper the hilarity generated by the stars. They deserve a much stronger showcase than this Laurel & Hardy Go Policin' vehicle.