What comes to mind when you hear the word comedy? Perhaps you think of the humorous plays of Ancient Greece or your Favorite SNL skits and National Lampoons characters. Or maybe you recall any discourse that makes you laugh and smile. When it comes to narrative forms of comedy, there are several elements that commonly comprise a comedy film. Prevalence of humor, a happy ending, a ludic tone, an uplifting existential worldview and overall magnified disharmony/disorder are components that comedy films utilize to be successfully humorous. In Paul Fieg’s The Heat, all of these devices can be clearly identified. Despite the film’s overarching action/crime theme, the movie adheres to all principles of narrative comedy and almost perfectly fits the model that we’ve constructed in class for a typical comedy film.
The Heat follows Special Agent Sarah Ashburn of the FBI (Sandra Bullock) and Detective Shannon Mullins of the Boston Police Department (Melissa McCarthy) as they are forced to work together in order to take down a drug mobster. There are plenty of action/adventure films that also follow two law enforcement agents as they take down criminals, but many of them are actually quite serious in nature. The Heat’s ludic or playful tone eliminates most of the seriousness of the film and addresses somber topics in a humorous manner. A ludic tone usually lends unrealistic rules of normativity and plausibility and produces a story world in which there aren’t real-world consequences for actions. The Heat certainly has a ludic tone and the characters seem completely free of real-world consequences. The way in which violence/crime is addressed is especially telling of the film’s tone. There are many scenes where we normally wouldn’t laugh if there wasn’t a playful tone to the film. For example, Ashburn gets stabbed in the leg near the end of the movie but there’s never any real worry about her well-being or safety because of how Mullins and Ashburn handle the situation with humor. Ashburn also tries to save a man who is choking by performing a makeshift tracheotomy, nearly killing him. This entire scene would normally be very serious because the man is dying and starts choking on blood when Ashburn tries to “help him”, but viewers laugh the entire time because of how ridiculous Ashburn is acting. We know that the man isn’t actually going to die because of the film’s ludic and playful tone.
Mullins also finds herself in several normally serious situations that are instead humorous and playful. The entire scene when Mullins is chasing the man who’s cheating on his wife and the drug dealer through the streets is telling of how the film doesn’t really follow natural rules of normativity. She almost breaks the cheater’s arm and actually does end up breaking/spraining the dealer’s leg. The way in which Mullins interacts with these two men is probably not how a normal detective would behave and she doesn’t receive any punishment for her wild behavior. There’s also a scene when Mullins and Ashburn dangle the same dealer over the side of a deck and accidentally drop him. In both of these instances, there’s actually no real consequences surrounding their recklessness. Furthermore, the injured characters aren’t actually in any serious danger and the audience laughs at them instead of being concerned for their well-being. Even when characters do get shot/killed in the movie, there’s really no seriousness to these situations. These examples show that the tone of The Heat is playful and that the film’s world lacks any real hardships or dangers.
In a fictional world without consequence or seriousness, it only makes sense that there’d be a happy ending to Mullins and Ashburn’s stories. The protagonists achieve their goals, the antagonists get what they deserve and there’s communal and familial reconciliation. Mullins and Ashburn end up catching the villain and saving Mullins’ brother who was in danger. The film’s main antagonist, Larkin, ends up getting shot in the genitals and is sent to prison (a humorous way to round out the main conflict of the movie). Mullins is reunited with her family and they finally start to show some support for her police career, eagerly cheering as she’s awarded a medal for outstanding service. After having no romantic luck throughout the course of the film, it’s implied that Ashburn will start dating her colleague Agent Levy. Finally, Mullins and Ashburn become best friends and end up being able to work together because Ashburn takes a job in Boston instead of returning to New York. Virtually every conflict and challenge in the movie is resolved positively, which further solidifies The Heat as a comedy film.
In a fictional world without consequence or seriousness, it only makes sense that there’d be a happy ending to Mullins and Ashburn’s stories. The protagonists achieve their goals, the antagonists get what they deserve and there’s communal and familial reconciliation. Mullins and Ashburn end up catching the villain and saving Mullins’ brother who was in danger. The film’s main antagonist, Larkin, ends up getting shot in the genitals and is sent to prison (a humorous way to round out the main conflict of the movie). Mullins is reunited with her family and they finally start to show some support for her police career, eagerly cheering as she’s awarded a medal for outstanding service. After having no romantic luck throughout the course of the film, it’s implied that Ashburn will start dating her colleague Agent Levy. Finally, Mullins and Ashburn become best friends and end up being able to work together because Ashburn takes a job in Boston instead of returning to New York. Virtually every conflict and challenge in the movie is resolved positively, which further solidifies The Heat as a comedy film.
There is certainly an uplifting existential worldview to the movie, but this element of comedy is less present than some of the other elements. These worldviews relate to ideas about life and the nature of our existence as humans. In comedy films, they are usually positive ideas and affirm that everything works out as it should in the end. Every conflict in The Heat is resolved in the end, implying that in real criminal or law enforcement situations, the ‘good guys’ always catch the ‘bad guys’. In reality, this isn’t always the case and criminals frequently go free, but The Heat leaves audience members feeling like things will always work out in the end no matter how bleak problems might seem. Comedy also embraces humanism over egocentrism and usually charts characters’ paths toward betterment. In the film, Mullins and Ashburn both have their egocentric flaws. They’re both competitive, authoritative and mean to their colleagues. They must learn to work together and embrace their humanistic traits in order to solve the case. By the end of the movie, Mullins and Ashburn are more self-aware, optimistic and kind towards one another and the rest of the characters in the film. Comedy promotes and often requires this type of character development and adoption of positive personality traits, so The Heat possesses this element of the comedy model as well.
For a film to be a comedy, there obviously needs to be humor involved. Without humor and amusement, there wouldn’t be much to laugh at! However, the prevalence of humor in any given comedy movie various largely across a spectrum. Some movies are ‘laugh-out-loud funny’ while others just make us smile but are still humorous and comedic. I think a lot of the humor in The Heat is more clever and sardonic, opposed to slapstick or uproarious. There were definitely scenes in which I did laugh-out-loud. For example, the scene where Ashburn performs surgery on the choking man is absolutely hilarious, if not only because of Melissa McCarthy’s reactions in the moment. While big comic events like this one did make me laugh-out-loud, I’d argue that most of the humor in the film is more understated rather than uproarious. There’s a lot of one-liners and jokes that relate back to the theories we discussed at the beginning of the semester. Regardless, humor is present in virtually every scene of the film.
The Heat is also full of instances of magnified disharmony, disorder and disturbance. This disharmony can issue from many types of situations and there are examples of each in The Heat. Firstly, comedic disharmony is often issued from exaggerated egocentrism. Mullins and Ashburn are both pretty egotistical, competitive, self-absorbed and socially inept when it comes to interacting with their colleagues. It’s humorous to watch them interact with one another and the world around them. Disharmony also stems from fiascos/situations when plans and intentions go terribly (and comically) wrong. There are several mishaps and misfortunes that the main characters find themselves dealing with. Mullins trying to get out of her trapped car to no avail, Ashburn stabbing a man in the neck in a failed attempt to save him, Ashburn’s laughable attempts at flirting in the club, Mullins and Asburn’s drunken night at the dive bar and their unprofessional interrogations/takedowns of suspects are all fiascos. These scenes are hilarious and add to the comical disharmony between the two main characters and of the film as a whole.
Comedies also frequently revolve around ‘misintegration’ or characters being thrust into alien settings and functioning awkwardly in contexts where they feel out of place. “Fish out of water” comedies rely heavily on misintegration and I think it could be argued that the entire film is a variation of this type of comedy. Both Mullins and Ashburn are not used to working with a partner, so the entire film revolves around them getting used to one another and adjusting to this change. The film could be considered even more of a “fish out of water” comedy with regard to Ashburn because she’s in a completely different city than she’s familiar with and she’s not used to interacting with Bostonians. She also becomes involved in Mullins’ crazy family matters and since she was a foster child, she’s completely out of her element in this regard too.
There’s also a variety of miscalibration and misunderstanding, but less of these devices than other comic tropes. Miscalibration deals with characters treating situations with too much or too little seriousness/importance. At the beginning of the movie, Ashburn takes herself and the job way too seriously. She really plays off the fact that she’s a higher-ranking law enforcement official than the Boston police officers and is overly by-the-book during the opening drug bust. Mullins takes several situations too seriously also. She goes overboard when arresting the man who’s cheating on his wife and the petty drug dealer, and she also throws a crazy fit when she finds out from her chief that Ashburn is taking over the case. Most instances of miscalibration occur at the beginning of the film and are corrected later as the characters develop. With misunderstanding, comedy arises from confusion or alarm in regard to mistaken identity, double entendre or misapprehension of meaning. An example of misunderstanding would be when Ashburn mistakes the bearded man for Mullins in the dive bar. I think the entire bit with Ashburn, Mullins and the stolen cat could also be considered misunderstanding because Mullins wrongly thinks the neighbor’s cat is Ashburn’s and goes all the way to New York to steal it back. Lastly, there was only one instance of disharmony issuing from imposture (characters using disguises to advance goals) and this is when Mullins and Ashburn disguise themselves as provocative club-goers in order to steal LeSoire’s phone.
The Heat fits almost perfectly into the narrative comedy model we’ve constructed in class. It possesses a ludic tone, instances of humor in nearly every scene, magnified disharmony/disorder, an uplifting existential worldview and a happy ending. While some of the smaller comic devices are less present in the film than others, at least one instance of each of them can be identified. And while a comedy film need not adhere to this narrative model perfectly in order to be successful, The Heat combines all of the model’s elements to be an enjoyable and wildly funny movie.
SOPHIA PORTELLI 