You’re reading A.O. Scott‘s review of The Heat, and he states early on that the film, directed by Bridesmaid‘s Paul Feig, has broken a sexism barrier by being the first cop-boddy comedy without guys. It “wears its feminism lightly and proudly, though not always comfortably,” he says. And yet it’s “a fairly standard summertime R-rated comedy, which I guess could be described as a kind of progress.” In other words, it’s bad but not altogether bad given the feminist breakthrough this film has achieved…if you want to be generous about it.

“A simpler, and probably more relevant, way to describe this movie would be to say that it’s around two hours of Melissa McCarthy spewing profanity while Sandra Bullock cringes, flutters her arms and sighs in exasperation. If you need another reason to see it, I can’t in good conscience supply one, since the story is sloppy and thin, many of the jokes are strained or tired, and the level of violence is a bit jarring. But the volatile chemistry between Ms. McCarthy and Ms. Bullock is something to behold, and carries The Heat through its lazy conception and slapdash execution.

The Heat “is not a very good movie,” he says in paragraph #8. “Its script is a rehash of the obvious and the pointless, without the knowing self-mockery of 21 Jump Street. And it suffers from the familiar, crippling desire to be naughty without risking offense. So there are jokes at the expense of albinos and people with Boston accents and halfhearted race- and class-based gags.”

I ought to just man up and pay the ticket price and see this, but I honestly don’t know if I can take it. Honestly.