The Heat - film review

Paul Feig’s last film, the riotous female-led romcom Bridesmaids, was a deserved smash, but the industry hoopla around it was self-defeatingly patronising: “See, women can be funny!” studio execs crowed, as if this still needs proving 45 years on from the death of Dorothy Parker.

They will do the same with The Heat, so let’s get this out of the way now: this terrific vehicle for the perfectly mismatched comic stylings of Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy isn’t a hilarious girl-power trip. It’s simply hilarious. That it’s also the most satisfying Hollywood comedy since, well, Bridesmaids — and in the male-dominated buddy-cop genre, to boot — bodes ill for the glass ceiling, but you don’t need a uterus to laugh yourself silly when McCarthy, as a deranged lawwoman, apprehends a criminal by tossing a watermelon at his head.

The humour isn’t sophisticated, and neither is the premise, which doesn’t veer far from the Eighties template set by 48 Hrs and Lethal Weapon. Bullock is the by-the-book FBI agent who must partner up with McCarthy’s rogue Boston cop to take down a toxic drug lord.

You can probably guess that they don’t get on until, eventually, they do; happily, the duo’s personalities mesh beautifully from the get-go. Bullock may have won an Oscar for a plucky dramatic turn in The Blind Side, but she’s still a marvellous physical comedian, her sweet spryness accentuated rather than overwhelmed by McCarthy’s flashier barnstorming — which can grate in more dimwitted vehicles than this.

First-time feature writer Katie Dippold’s snappy script intersperses the breeziness with bristly office politics, but allows more room for the stars’ snappy comic riffing. Theirs is the kind of heat that can’t be faked or calculated; in a summer overburdened with sequels, here’s a pairing that actually demands one.

Watch The Heat trailer: