The Heat

As a number of feminist bloggers have pointed out, some jackass photoshopped the living shit out of Melissa McCarthy in this photo, to the point that she doesn't even look like herself.  Fortunately, she looks like herself in the actual movie, and she's very, very funny.

So some movie development person watched Bridesmaids and thought, "Melissa McCarthy is hilarious!  Why don't we have her play pretty much the same character in a really by-the-numbers buddy cop movie with two women instead of two men?"

They did that and the result is a lot of fun.  You should go see it.  McCarthy is the wacky cop and Sandra Bullock is the hard-nosed, by-the-book FBI agent who just needs to loosen up.  They're a charming comedy duo.  There are vagina jokes in place of dick jokes.  There are also dick jokes.

Until I saw this movie, I didn't realize how fatigued I'd become with a summer movie lineup full of self-serious, CGI-driven blockbusters in which zombies gnaw people's faces off, civilization crumbles to the beat of a relentless thumping musical score, sleek and muscular superbeings careen purposefully through the air, and by the end of the movie a major American city lies in smoldering ruins.

The Heat makes no such tiresome demands on the audience.  It's just a series of solid comic scenes wrapped around a plot involving crime or drug-smuggling or some damn thing that you will probably care about for forty-five seconds, total, over the entire course of the movie.  Time flew by in the dark theater, the audience all laughed together, and John and I walked out into the rainy night feeling happy, relaxed and refreshed.