The Heat Reviews
Top CriticDirector Paul Feig, whose Bridesmaids upended notions of what a raunchy ensemble comedy could be, does it again here with another genre.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
If you've never seen the point of Sandra Bullock, watch this.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
There are only two reasons to see The Heat. But they are formidable reasons, and they go by the names of Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
If you've never seen Sandra Bullock blow a peanut shell out of her nose, and you'd like to, The Heat is your movie.
The many formulas never mesh, and some formidable actors stumble trying to keep pace with its out-of-synch meters.
If this were funny, The Heat would add up to your average buddy-cop comedy. Except that it's not funny, at least not very and not often.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
There's an edgy but rewarding chemistry between Bullock and McCarthy that makes me wish they were attached to a less foul-tasting premise.
Laughter can be magical. It can also be crass. In the formidable person of Melissa McCarthy it is typically both. And no director seems to know what to do with that tension quite like Paul Feig.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's not really such a great achievement to have women cops in the movies acting as boorish and rowdy as their male counterparts.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
... a rapid-fire script and the inspired pairing of Bullock and McCarthy make 'The Heat' one of the funniest films of the year so far.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
The Heat come, they conquer, and they leave you laughing.
Bullock has played this role so many times you wonder why she's bothering. And while McCarthy can be brilliant in small doses, her foul-mouthed tough gal bit wears thin quickly.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
[Feig] clearly enjoys the spectacle of women behaving badly, and gives his stars - and particularly McCarthy - plenty of room and improv time to knock back shots, bust a move and beat up men until they squeal like little girls.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Give these ladies a genuinely smart, funny script -- and give McCarthy more to play than what has become a tiresome tomboy shtick -- and there's no telling what liberated heights they can reach.
It's disappointing that "The Heat" doesn't do more than take an established film template - in this case, the buddy-cop flick - throw in a Tarantino-size helping of F-bombs, cast a couple of women and call it a day.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Bullock specializes in awkward and uptight, McCarthy in aggressive and unfiltered. "The Heat" makes the most of those differences.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
The Heat is the best female buddy-cop movie since, well, ever.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The cookie-cutter plot might have worked if the jokes were good.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
One wonders ... what the future holds for Ms. McCarthy's career if every new film is going to exploit her more shamelessly than the previous one.
As in any buddy comedy, chemistry is key-and Bullock and McCarthy have it in spades.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Bullock can do a double-takes better than any actress working today, and boy, does force-of-nature McCarthy give her plenty to work with.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
McCarthy owns this movie, but nearly everyone in it is hilarious.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The Heat is fresher than a lot of the male-centric movies it takes off from, because there's little about aggressive guy banter that hasn't been worn to the ground by Hollywood.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Employs any and all means necessary to get at least a chuckle out of most scenes in the nearly two-hour running time.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7.9/10
From the moment she barrels onto the scene like a cannonball of crudity, McCarthy makes it clear that this movie is hers to make or break. And she knocks it right out of Fenway Park ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
"The Heat" has been engineered to deliver the laughs, and the result certainly does, despite coming alarmingly near to botching the procedural elements along the way.
A crude, low-brow audience-pleaser that will hit the funny bones of both performers' fan bases ...
"The Heat" is a good movie and a successful action comedy, and it arrives just in time for Melissa McCarthy... (it) is something of a formula comedy, but it's inspired, too - and the inspiration is in the combining of these two actresses.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
There probably won't be a funnier movie this year that features female bonding, drunken dancing, grenade launchers and a seriously botched emergency tracheotomy.
The volatile chemistry between Ms. McCarthy and Ms. Bullock is something to behold, and carries "The Heat" through its lazy conception and slapdash execution.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
With so few women afforded the opportunity to steer the course of a movie - any movie, on screen or off - even a formulaic vehicle such as "The Heat" arrives as a surprise and a relief.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
"The Heat" would be a fairly ordinary entry in the female buddy cop genre except ... there is no genre yet. Happily, Melissa McCarthy may single-handedly change that.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
It's a buddy-cop comedy that deserves to share a locker room with "The Other Guys" and "21 Jump Street."
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
If you're going to make a dopey, bawdy, foul-mouthed, predictable lady-buddy-cop movie, you might as well make it funny.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
There's a discussion to be had about why this is the only major movie this summer with two women in the lead roles - but it's hard to have a serious discussion when you're laughing.
