While I applaud the success of any studio film starring and written by women - especially in the genre of comedy, which has been a boys club for far too long - I cannot help but lament the fact that a film like The Heat can be lauded as a "breath of fresh air." Is this how low we've set the bar, that The Heat's spec script sale and lack of explosions are enough to deem it something other than "the same old shit"? The Heat's characters, plot, and jokes are stunningly unoriginal. It is a boilerplate buddy cop film in every sense, bringing nothing new to the table. Again, I am pleased to see women in roles long reserved exclusively for men, but beyond that The Heat is unequivocally "the same old shit."

Nikolai said it well. I, too, am thrilled we have a female-driven, female-written action comedy on the summer slate this year. And yes, The Heat definitely had its hilarious moments ... but it's nothing ground-breaking at all. I enjoyed the film for what it was -- a no-brainer popcorn flick. But it's definitely NOT the "funniest movie ever" -- no. That's SUCH a tall order. If we want to change the game, I think you said it best, Scott: "I hope the lesson screenwriters take from the success of The Heat is this: Be different. Don’t be afraid to twist the conventions. Invert the expected into the unexpected."

Music to my ears. Now what? I hope this signal if you film it, they will come. I think having a film based on two women carrying off comedy is ground-breaking. When has this happened before? Two women drove Thelma And Louise, but that was a film where the women's only choice of power over their lives was driving off a cliff. At the least, it's a crack in the ground that will grow larger. Along with the growing demand for family films in shorts and this article today http://bit.ly/17PBfgA women are back. The fastest growing, and largest demographic, in this country right now is women over 50. Us old broads do not demur to what a man wants to see for a night out, and we've had decades of choking down what we want in every era of life. We're done. We're strong. We're opening the door to men enjoying the stories of women, and giving them the freedom to grow up and enjoy laughing at whatever's funny. We've got attitude and have no problem telling a companion they can go where we want to go or stay home and clip their toenails. We don't care. We'll talk about compromise later. With a little more confidence under our belts we can start busting out and taking risks and enjoying a more complete version of the human experience. Hot damn! This gives me a whole bunch more juice to finish that screenplay about a man coming to his mature senses about love. Then on to sticking the neck out a bit more.

Nikolai, from one perspective, I could concur with you. "The Heat" stands in a long tradition of buddy cop movies. However such is the state of things in Hollywood nowadays that a tried and true story type like this one featuring two female leads can be considered 'different'. Now one may criticize the jokes, the characters, the plot as being "stunningly unoriginal" (there are many who would disagree with you, just check out Rotten Tomatoes here where the movie has a 62% critics rating and a 78% audience rating, not stellar, but still considered 'fresh'), but the choice by the filmmakers to make women the leads and the decision by Fox to green light the movie is notable. Is the bar set too low? Again I can see your point. But it is what it is right now in Hollywood, where ANYTHING that isn't a prequel, sequel, remake, rebrand, pre-brand movie is considered unusual. So strictly from the perspective of screenwriters, aspiring and professional, the success of "The Heat" opens the door to alternate fare just a little bit, which is a good thing. In closing, please note my original post from last Friday in which I promoted this: While most folks were frothing over big franchise movies coming out this summer, I’m sitting here fanning the embers for indie films including The Way, Way Back (July 5), Fruitvale Station (July 12), The Spectacular Now (August 2), I Give It A Year (August 9), Drinking Buddies and Short Term 12 (August 23), and The Lifeguard (August 30). SUPPORT INDEPENDENT CINEMA, PEOPLE!

Let me clarify: The jokes/comedy/story were not ground-breaking. Females leads? Of course, a welcome rarity. Scott, I'm actually surprised it's well-received by so many critics. On one hand, I think that's GREAT -- less fear/hesitation to greenlight future projects w/ female leads, less fear/hesitation to write different. But on the other hand, I keep hearing Judge Judy say, "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining." Obviously there are so many angles with which to explain/praise/criticize The Heat's success. Least it gets us talkin', right? ;) I definitely look forward to seeing some of the indies listed above --- unfortunately, I often have to travel up to 2 hours to see them or wait for-freakin'-stink-ever for them to open in my area ...

I like that The Heat is a no-brainer popcorn flick. It shows that wonen's films don't have to be about "women's issues" they can just be fun, you know?

I do, too ...

We went. We laughed. We word-of-mouthed. I'm delighted with "The Heat" and I hope its success will open doors -- and minds -- re: the potential for wildly successful female-driven movies. Now, I don't particularly care for incessant potty mouthing, but I "got" Melissa's character and it fit. I have some other criticisms of the movie. But after I read some comments posted here I wanted to ask, what part of "R-rated buddy action comedy movie" do some folks not understand? The creators had to hit some key marks: They had to satisfy expectations of fans of the genre. And they had to satisfy expectations of business interests for a solid ROI. Not doing that would have guaranteed a bust ('scuze me) from the start. And if you're going to market a movie as an R-rated comic action buddy movie for the summer season, you'd better deliver it. Knocking the flick because it actually does fulfill its genre requirements -- except that it does it with two kick-ass female comic actors instead of two kick-ass male comic actors -- feels kinda cheap to me. To say that it was no different from all the other R-rated comic action buddy movies, except it featured girls, and the girls' girls, as part of the fun? Um. Well. That IS the difference, isn't it? And what else seems to be different is that all involved grew the -- in the movie's parlance -- balls to put this female-driven R-rated buddy action comedy out there in the summer, head-to-head with the boys and the big boys, on 2,000-plus screens. They gave it way more than enough rope to hang itself or to be a hit. A bunch of people had moxie. Thank you! They found a way to twist jokes, action, comic relief and the comic angst of characters from macho to mucha pretty well. They stood their ground against pressure (I understand) to insert two male squeezes into the mix -- which would have dumped all over the genre and probably resulted in a mashup train wreck. No, "The Heat" isn't "The Queen's Speech." But it isn't supposed to be. "The King's Speech," one of my favorite movies, wasn't birthed on 2,000-plus screens in mid-summer. It opened in Oscar-movie-time -- limited opening on Nov. 26, 2010, in 4 theaters for an opening weekend box office of $335,450; wide opening in 700 theaters on Christmas Day, 2010, for an opening weekend box office of $4.48 million. Eventually this masterpiece reached 2,584 theaters domestically -- almost the number "The Heat" had to contend with on Day One. And it deservedly went on garner nearly $139 million in the domestic market and $414 million worldwide. Viva le différence. Congratulations to some very courageous creators and backers. May you live long and prosper -- whoops, that's another genre to conquer.

Great analysis, Judy, and you drive home a key point: Certain genres carry with them certain kinds of expectations and writers can play TO those expectations, AGAINST them, and more than likely BOTH in a movie. The big AGAINST expectations in "The Heat" is two kick-ass female leads. The fact those two characters play TO certain tropes and memes associated with the genre is, in itself, a variation on theme: "Oh, look, they're busting the head of a bad guy, only they're doing it from a female perspective." I'll say this: "The Heat" benefits from being 'new' (relative to what has transpired in the movie marketplace over the last decade or so), but if Hwood were to greenlight and produce a half-dozen clones of "The Heat," the freshness of what we both described would wear off. But, of course, Hwood will almost certainly NOT produced a half-dozen other R-rated action-comedies starring female leads, so that's likely not the biggest issue. Rather simply getting ANY genre movies with ANY unique slant to them like "The Heat" or "Looper" is. Which is why when they come out, the more business they generate, the more likely Hwood is to notice.

Sure it's the same old shit, BUT it kept me laughing through the whole movie. It does what it is supposed to do with a FRESH take. I loved it. I've read a couple of really bad reviews on it lately, and I still don't get it. Thumbs up on The Heat IMO. I think the writer did an awesome job.