The Heat

Melissa McCarthy, in The Heat, came close to duplicating her role in Identity Thief--rough, foul-mouthed, slovenly. I didn't care much for her in Identity, almost no redeeming qualities, but I liked her in Heat. In Identity she plays a nasty felon but in Heat she's Shannon Mullins, a non-conforming but effective Boston cop. Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock), a New York FBI agent, travels to Boston on a drug ring case and has to team up with McCarthy. And it's not a happy union . . . at first. The two start out as personality polar opposites, agent Ashburn a hard-to-like, uptight, by-the-book ex-nerd. But, naturally, by the end they meet in the middle, both coming to admire the other. In fact, it was apparent throughout that the two of them got a kick out of playing these two dissimilar people, bonding in real life as well as in the film.

Only one part bothered me. There's a long scene in a grungy bar where they're doing shots of tequila (at Mullins's urging) and it goes on for the entire night. It was suggesting that real people can do shots and do shots and do shots without any ill effects except for a hangover. That gives young people a dangerous example to follow. One can't do shots for a whole evening. One tends to die. But although this wasn't even close to great cinema, it was certainly better than Identity Thief and was entertaining enough to warrent a trip to the theater. Besides, what a great excuse to munch popcorn.