Ask me how I resist posting about a buddy cop movie starring Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you craft the perfect question … Never mind, I’m just going to answer you: I cannot resist posting about it. I am writing two stories about women in comedy today, and you’re just going to have to deal with it, because this is great news. This is a buddy cop movie starring two women as cops, and that is new and exciting. It’s also being directed by Paul Feig, who also directed Bridesmaids, and if all of this means that McCarthy and Bullock use unconventional bathroom furniture as toilets, then sign me up. It won’t, because that was part of the screenplay, so Feig had little to do with that. But the screenplay was written by Parks and Recreation co-showrunner Katie Dippold, so… Holy crap, this is truly exciting.
According to Variety, the currently untitled movie will star Bullock as a “high strung FBI agent” and McCarthy as an “unconventional” Boston police officer as they team up against a Russian gangster. And while Screen Rant points out that such a plot doesn’t seem like cause for alarm, keep in mind that this is a buddy cop comedy with two women as the cops. This has never been done before. Sure, we’ve seen two dudes, and we’ve seen co-ed cop movies before. But this is different. This is two proven comedy actresses playing the cops. And it’s about freaking time we saw that!
It seems like there was a great opportunity to do a female buddy cop comedy because of the careers of the two women who were cast. Bullock won an Oscar in 2010 for her role in The Blind Side and has been sticking to drama ever since. But as we know, she has a knack for playing funny law enforcement types, as she did in Miss Congeniality and its sequel. And while her turn in the flop All About Steve (released the same year as The Blind Side) wasn’t seen as a comedic triumph, her appearance at the Razzies to pick up that award was. In short, Sandra Bullock can do comedy.
And what else can we say about Melissa McCarthy? She’s Melissa McCarthy. An Oscar nominee herself, for her role in Bridesmaids, as well as an Emmy winner for her role on the sitcom Mike and Molly, McCarthy’s star continues to rise and grow an increasingly longer comet stream behind it. She’s set to do two movies with Feig, the other one being a romantic comedy with her starring opposite Jon Hamm. But she’s also appearing in Judd Apatow‘s Knocked Up spinoff/sequel This Is Forty, plus the title role in The Identity Thief, co-starring Jason Bateman and still-an-actor Jon Favreau.
You guys, Favreau, as we know, directed the first two Iron Man movies and was a co-producer on The Avengers. And Feig wrote some material for The Amazing Spider-Man. So, let’s clap our hands and wish on fairies that there is a place in the Marvel universe somewhere for Melissa McCarthy, because sweet heavens to Betsy…
All of that awesome, and I haven’t even talked about Katie Dippold yet. A co-showrunner of Parks and Recreation (with Michael Schur), she wrote for MADtv and has a long career writing comedy for television and writing/performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade. While a full-length screenplay is new territory for Dippold, it seems like the next logical step (and it worked out well for fellow sketch comedy performer/improviser Kristen Wiig). Bonus experience: she is familiar with local government.
So, yeah — basically I’m as excited as I can possibly be about this movie. Watch this space for further developments, like a title, release date, how many people have died of sheer joy, etc.
(via Screen Rant)
