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The Heat Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demián Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Michael Rapaport, Jane Curtin, Dan Bakkedahl, Taran Killam, Michael McDonald, Spoken Reasons, Tom Wilson, Tony Hale

The Heat: a talented but unlikable by-the-book FBI agent is paired with an unorthodox-but-gets-results detective. It’s one film where FBI could mean ‘Female Body Inspector’ like those awesome t-shirts you see guys wearing on holiday (aside: they’re not awesome). Bullock is clearly going through an “I work hard on this body, so will show it off as much as possible” phase… no complaints over here. Joke-wise, it’s got a few good laughs, but unlike Bridesmaids original script the funnies here are much lazier; with Boston stereotypes, racism, vulgarity, and albinos doing all the work. The elongated drunken montage / gratuitous dance scene underlines that this is definitely more humor than humour. At two hours the film outstays its welcome a little; every scene (and joke) feels stretched out to the max, and it feels like there was a lot of ad-libbing that nobody was allowed to cut out. Other than the central pairing being two wimin’, there’s not much here that we haven’t all seen before. The Heat started off quite strongly, but soon went down the well-worn ‘mismatched buddy cop’ path: but you expected something different – or better – given the caliber involved.

Score: 4/10

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The Blind Side: Rich white family take in a homeless black dude and fund his transformation into an American Football star. Biggest shock for me was Sandy’s Oscar. She was believable, but showed no range, coasting in her comfort zone – playing the perfect, morally righteous, confident soccer-mum – in saying that she seems to be getting hotter with age! Not doubting her talent but getting one over on Mirren & Streep… dubious.  Big Mike was convincing as the unobtrusive, good-natured, underdog. Can anyone tell me why is Kathy Bates always an inspirational Southerner?! For me, this fell under the ‘comedy’ branch more than anything else, focusing on the inspirational and feel-good stuff and shunning any saddening backstory. It would help to know a bit about the American College system and American Football going in to this. It’s  a good story, told quite well but is so All-American, almost to the point of stereotype: the good Christian mum, American Dream dad, prosperous children, poor ghetto boy, blockhead coach… It was on track for a 7 but just refused lay off with the nicey nice.

Score: 6.5/10