Melissa McCarthy's Weltanschauung

“You dress like you’re grocery shopping at a CVS,” Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy) remarks to her assistant, Claire (Kristen Bell), a single mother who is about to go out on a date in The Boss. On a the Richter scale of laughs it’s about a #3, but it also is a peculiar little line since it has the appearance of an in- joke. The viewer knows what she’s talking since ostensibly he or she has, in fact, stooped to buying groceries at the CVS, Walgreen’s or even the dreaded Duane Reade. There are a couple of tony words worthy of comment in the movie. "Hangry" is a mutt created by angry and hungry and “vajunification” is an apparent neologism, but also brings to mind reunification which is what happened when the Berlin Wall came down. In poli sci when countries that have formerly been balkanized are brought back together, it’s called “irredentism.” But McCarthy who's given a script credit doesn’t go that far. The Boss lowers the bar for what is considered comic, not in terms of vulgarity. No one can beat the Farelly Brothers when it comes to that, but in terms of insipidness. But what’s interesting about the movie like her earlier  Identity Thief is the creation of the comic persona, which, one has a hunch, is a kind of cri de coeur. Both characters are suffering from a bad case of sour grapes (in the wake of being orphaned as children), having turned their disaffection from humanity into a profession. If the CVS quip makes you feel at home, you probably have also met Melissa McCarthy or the characters she plays before, the kind of person who failing to be good or attractive or both becomes good at being horribly bad, even repulsive in every way. Bridesmaids is probably one of the great comedies of all time. But watch out what you want for you might get it. McCarthy’s earlier success has obviously given her carte blanche to create a brand, and the brand is that of the fat girl who shows or tells all and makes you vomit. Waxing is so ubiquitous that it now appears like vapor emitted by serial killers in the London axe murder movies and sure enough there was the obligatory scene of McCarthy with her legs spread removing unwanted pubic hair while spraying herself with a self tanner. "It’s all good" says M.C. Hammer. We might not be able to say the reverse about The Boss, which bears an odd kinship with The Apprentice, but almost.

The Heat

The comic premise behind The Heat is that a Yale educated FBI agent (Sandra Bullock) has to prove she can get along with a street smart South Boston cop (Melissa McCarthy) in order to get promoted. So we have the makings of a buddy movie in which opposites attract a la Rush Hour, Trading Places and Lethal Weapon. The Heat makes up for the lapse in female versions of the genre and aims to prove that what comes out of the mouths of its female leads can compete with Eddie Murphy, Chris Tucker or any other bad boy on camera. And if we were to judge the movie by this criteria--“tattle tits,” “boner killer,” “who closes the door when they take a shit,” “I’m going to get you a dick sucker for Xmas, so I don’t have to do it no more” are a few prize examples--The Heat is a mild success. It would be unfair to say that there aren’t some funny scenes in the movie which could be subtitled, “Six Jokes in Search of a Director,” but the set-up is so utterly contrived and tedious that The Heat, is an essay on everything that a high concept movie shouldn’t be. It's actually work to take the wind out of Melissa McCarthy’s sails. So what went wrong? “What does laughter mean?” Henri Bergson once asked. If only someone could come up with a formula which explained what goes wrong here, but let’s just say that like Miss Havisham two talented comedians are caught up in the cobwebs of an utterly listless script and choreography. Melissa McCarthy’s got the anarchic force of a great comedian, but she has to be more selective, if she wants to repeat her tour de force performance in Bridesmaids. The Heat like a previous film Identity Thief is merely a worthy idea. But it’s the execution not the premise that creates the humor.

Identity Thief

Anyone who has ever been the victim of credit card fraud or had their identity stolen entirely will “identify" with the character Jason Bateman plays in Identity Thief. The helplessness of such fraud is exacerbated by the monolith of modern technology. A series of erroneous transactions may be instigated by a criminal, but once they’ve occurred, they take on a life of their own. Bateman who plays a mid-level financial services executive named Sandy Bigelow Patterson is lucky or unlucky enough to have discovered the face of evil, a woman criminal played by Melissa McCarthy, of Bridesmaids fame, who has used his androgynous name to her own benefit. Identity Thief is what Hollywood calls a high concept movie. but it’s a mess that lulls its audience into a stupor as it struggles to set up an unwieldy plot. The script is lead. However, what’s interesting about it is that it’s classic Americana in the style of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels. In Sullivan’s Travels a film director dresses up as a hobo to see how the other half lives and ends up finding himself thrown into prison on a trumped up murder charge. In Identify Thief, Bateman sets out to restore his good name and ends up becoming an accomplice to fraud, taking the cue from a sociopath who convinces him the ends justify the means and that certain people deserve what’s coming to them. So it’s not thievery, but the more profound question of identity itself that’s the lingua franca of the movie. The Melissa McCarthy character is significantly an orphan who has never known her real name. Would that these interesting concepts had been handled in a less cumbersome manner. One after another the conceits unfold, along with an overabundance of plot threads. Sandy is not the only one in hot pursuit of his double, who turns out to be a fraudster with a heart of gold. A collection agent and two hired killers are part of the pile up that sidetracks this tepid addition to the road movie genre.