Movie Review: The Heat

Reviewed by Kevin Finnerty

“Could you close the door on the way out?” asks FBI special agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock). “I could close the door on you if you lay down over here so I can close the door on your head 157 thousand times,” replies detective Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) in the cop comedy film The Heat.
 
Uptight, by-the-book FBI special agent Sarah Ashburn has closed more cases than any other agent in her branch and is up for a big promotion, but her boss is unsure if she’s the best choice because she’s hated by all the other agents … Ashburn doesn’t work well with others. So he sends Ashburn to Boston to follow a lead which could bring about bringing down a drug lord, instructing her to work with the local detectives.
 
When Ashburn first meets Boston detective Mullins she immediately rubs her the wrong way by mistaking her for a possible perp because of her sloppy appearance. Neither one of them having any real choice in the matter, Ashburn and Mullins reluctantly partner up and try to work together to hunt down the drug lord and bring him in.
 
Juvenile, silly, and ridiculous, The Heat is an incredibly unfunny, awkward Odd Couple film that has only three original laughs in the entire movie. Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy have absolutely no comedic chemistry or timing in this poor excuse for a cop-buddy comedy, with scenes of them fighting followed by the unbearable, obligatory and forced bonding of the unlikely pair, including a scene that finds them getting wasted in a bar after a hard day on the case. (sigh)

Bullock is boring and unbelievable as the neat and tidy, uptight and brown-noising FBI agent Ashburn who it’s impossible to believe would be able to close any criminal case on her own. McCarthy turns in the second worse performance of her career (Identity Thief still remains her number worst) as Mullins, a cranky, obnoxious, slob of a detective who would have been written up and removed from the police force years ago in the real world.
 
Perhaps the second worst comedy of the year, The Heat is a predictable, practically laugh-less, cop-buddy comedy which fails miserably and should be evicted from the multiplexes immediately.
 
GRADE: D-
 
The Heat opened in theaters on June 28, 2013.