“The Heat” is a buddy-cop film, but in this case the buddies-cops have the XX chromosome. Melissa McCarthy plays the comic character against straight woman Sandra Bullock. What the film lacks in script, it makes up in Melissa McCarthy. To be clear, Sandra Bullock is a charming foil, but her role is crushed by the outrageousness of Ms. McCarthy’s character.

The story—if we can call it that—centers around nerdy, straight-laced, uptight and friendless FBI agent Ashburn (Bullock) on a special assignment in Boston. She’s forced to partner with foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, slovenly and friendless Detective Mullins (McCarthy).

There is some drug lord carving up people who cross him and this is what attracts various law enforcement agencies. They all clash in Boston over trying to find the bad guy. Ashburn is in New York and drives up to Boston in a scene that made me think of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”; I’m not sure if that was unintentional. Bullock doesn’t swear or curse or party until she is sucked into McCarthy’s vortex of crudeness. Her career suffers as well as her self-esteem…or the patina that covers her insecurity.

Mullins is shunned by her low-class, quasi-criminal family because she arrested her dim-witted brother to keep him off drugs and away from a life of crime. Mullins’ own mother (Jane Curtain) gives her the finger. Clearly, these two dysfunctional people are a match made in Hollywood.

This film survives a thumbs-down by the sheer talent of Ms. McCarthy and the loony sketch comedy type characters that appear to tumble out of a Mad Magazine parody…to mix a comparison.

The best lines are entirely too crude to repeat in polite or perhaps sober company. There are more than a few funny bits but the film would have been crisper with ten or fifteen minutes clipped here and there. However, the gags gave me some post departure chuckles as I drove home. The wisecracks, insults and put-downs are worth wondering which were written or improvised.

I bet the outtakes are even funnier…too bad they didn’t insert a few during the credits rather than the tired and clumsy attempt at trying to resurrect the rather retro-montage credits corpse of a “Starsky & Hutch” episode.

This is the type of movie that I would stumble across while scanning channels and be mesmerized by until being called upon to do a task for the Chore Commander. I am glad I got to see it in its entirety before I would have been denied seeing the end on TV by The Heat in my house.

For Melissa McCarthy fans, this is a must-see; it isn’t Bridesmaids, but it is worth some wicked chortles here and there. And for fans of Sandra Bullock, it is worth seeing to appreciate that an actress may demonstrate her comic talents post ingénue. She may be aging, but she takes it like a man. Wait, I think I tripped on that simile.

The comedy is a tad hard-edged and should you err thinking this is a chick flick, you should be warned: this isn’t some wimpy XY guy-and gun squeezer. This is a film where the real men aren’t and the real ”testosterones” are more likely just real jerks, just like in real life. Really!

“The Heat” packs in three-and-a-half bow ties out of five.