- Culture
- 07 Aug 13
Often hilarious buddy-cop film brings the funny, the formula and the female empowerment...
Directed by Paul Feig. Starring Melissa McCarthy, Sandra Bullock, Kaitlin Olsen, Tony Hale, Taran Killam. 117 mins
Paul Feig deserves a humanitarian award for teaching lessons that shouldn’t need to be taught. He proved that women could more than bring the funny with Bridesmaids. Now he’s showing women-folk can even do buddy cop movies!
Feig teams up with writer Katie Dippold for a funny, crass and plotted-by-numbers odd-couple action comedy. The material’s same-old same-old, but the casting and chemistry are magic. Sandra Bullock plays uptight prudish FBI agent to Melissa McCarthy’s somewhat crazy street cop. Bullock is on safe ground, utilising her talent for physical comedy, but it’s McCarthy who again proves herself to be fearless. Overtly sexual, physically aggressive and as skilled with prolonged, expletive-filled rants as with devastating one-liners, she’s a one person tour-de-force.
The film is subversive in that it shows women being foul mouthed and crude - just as vulgar as the men folk in other words. In that way, it’s extremely progressive. When last did you watch a movie in which vagina jokes out number knob gags?