There's a formula to the buddy cop action comedy; the rules of the trade of which cannot be altered. They are market-tested and machine-proofed and focused grouped to the hilt to which should not and will not ever be forsaken. By design, one of these cops (usually male) must be a Type-A, controlling sort, one with a mastery of principles, but maladroit at interpersonal contact, who displays a fussiness and overbearing arrogance which presents him as difficult to work with others. The other of these cops (again usually male), as formula dictates, must exhibit a brazen and unrefined technique at their craft, highlighted by a to-the-wind disregard of the rules and a devil may care work ethic, typically augmented by a disregard to ones personal appearance, all of which makes him, as well, difficult to work with others. The structure and discipline of the buddy cop action comedy formula dictates that such opposing characters must work together to solve some convoluted caper, only to find themselves, with their diametrically opposed personalities, as not just grand colleagues, but great friends in the final reel.
The formula isn't turned on its head, nor re-invented in the slightest in
The Heat, but it's one formidable transgression makes the film ever more watchable than nearly all the
Lethal Weapons,
Rush Hours and
Bad Boyses combined. For the first time, the cinemas have graced two women in the decades-perfected roles of the buddy cop action comedy formula, and through the graces of the lithe estrogen-enhanced reshuffling and recharging of the bombastic sub-genre, a little dignity is restored, for
The Heat, sort of like what a R-rated, George Cukor-directed version of
Lethal Weapon might look like, is at long last the female action comedy that men have taken for granted for such a long time.
