Recommended film: The Heat

[firecat]

The Heat is a buddy cop movie set in Boston starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. I thought it was really funny, and the humor does not rely on fat jokes (McCarthy is fat), fat stereotypes, sexual assault or harrassment.[1] There are some jokes based on appearance, and a lot of jokes based on class.

Normally I wouldn't see this type of movie in the theater but I did because wanted to reward the producers for making a film of this type that stars women.

There are spoilers in the comments.

[1]ETA: Add "against women". There were jokes about sexual harrassment of men.

Comments

[firecat]

I am pissed off at the Salon reviewer Andrew O'Hehir for opening his review with "Nothing quite says female empowerment like violating the civil rights of criminal suspects, am I right?" and "What is the point of making a movie that’s just like the dopiest, broadest and most reductive grade of guy-oriented comedy, except with women?"

Because of course movies starring women need to be held to a higher moral standard. Only guys should get to play foul-mouthed vigilante cops. Am I right?

Guessing that O'Hehir is white, I'm also guessing that he never felt the lack of seeing people like himself on the movie screen.

[flarenut]

This. You know that some kind of parity has been reached, not when the best of some discriminated-against group finally get to show how great they are, but when the mediocrities of that group reach high position the way that mediocrities of the dominant group do. (And saying nothing about the abilities of these particular women, rather that they get to make fun stupid movies too.)

(Now I am trying to think of a woman or a person of color as aggressively mediocre as GWB who might reasonably be considered an indicator of a true post-racial or post-gender-wars presidency.)

[firecat]

Exactly.