Man on Film: The Heat

I actually saw this at an advance screening at least two months ago, so The Heat isn't exactly fresh in my mind. I had however formulated what I wanted to say in my head a while back. I wanted to love this movie because of its director, Paul Feig. If there's anyone who has earned the undying love of the world at large, it's the creator of Freaks and Geeks.

The Heat is far from being bad. Its last half is actually quite good. Unfortunately, the first half takes an insanely long time to get going and doesn't deliver the funny with nearly enough frequency. Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy work very well together, and McCarthy (not even remotely surprisingly) puts the movie on her shoulders and carries it. For the past few years, this has been the case. McCarthy stole the show in Bridesmaids (the first time McCarthy and Feig worked together), and her scene in This Is 40 was the best scene in the film by far. She is a comic force to be reckoned with and once the clunky (and over-long) first act gets out of the film's way she is allowed to shine.

If a film is going to have a slow half, I suppose it's preferable to have the first half be the slow half, but it still makes for an uneven movie-going experience if the early goings of character development doesn't bring sufficient laughs along for the ride. Thankfully, it picks up and almost hits a stride with enough confidence to cleanse the first half from your palate, but it doesn't quite get there, leaving this in the realm of merely decent comedies. I suppose it's possible that this will be a film that grows on you with repeated viewings like Anchorman or The Big Lebowski, but I'd say that's unlikely.

Man on Film: This Is 40

It seems as though with every new Judd Apatow film the story he is spinning is more personal than the last. This Is 40 certainly furthers this notion. Unfortunately, as Apatow's films have gotten more personal, they've also gotten less relatable. And less funny.

Oh, yeah. Megan Fox is in the movie, too.

Now I don't want to sound like I'm not allowing for a filmmaker to grow or evolve. Obviously Apatow is not going to be making the same films at 45 that he was at 38. In his case, though, it means that he has gone from making The 40-Year-Old Virgin to This Is 40--a film that would be more at home in James L. Brooks's oeuvre than Apatow's were it not for the odd descent into ribaldry that would be out of place in a Brooks film--over the course of seven years. That may seem like a denigration of the works of James L. Brooks, who is a damn fine comedic director. That is not the intention at all. As Good As It Gets, Broadcast News, and Terms of Endearment are all fine films. It's just that The 40-Year-Old Virgin seemed to signify a paradigm shift in comedy. Then everything that Apatow seemed to touch as a producer turned to gold--coarse, bawdy gold.

As Apatow's films have gotten to be of a more personal nature, they've gotten more insular. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself, but This Is 40 (and for that matter Funny People) doesn't really click. The laughs don't come. It meanders too much, as Apatow is wont to do. It runs long. And the laughs don't come.

All of this is too bad because it means the talents of Paul Rudd, Chris O'Dowd, Albert Brooks, Jason Segel, and Leslie Mann are misspent. Michael Ian Black and Lena Dunham aren't spent at all. Perhaps worse than all of that, it is more than hard to buy into the central conceit that Pete and Debbie actually still love each other.

At least Melissa McCarthy had two scenes and the fantastic bonus footage in the end credits.