Melissa McCarthy

The meeting of McCarthy's stinging zingers and Bullock's practiced exasperation almost justifies The Heat, but it's more of a lob than a fastball.

Less like a movie and more like a contractual obligation.

McCarthy is a worthy successor to John Candy, who also had a gift for warming up caricatures with loveable humanity.

McCarthy delivers another all-in performance, but so much so as to be more sad than funny much of the time.

Needlessly starting out on such a false, bombastic note emblematizes the film's mistake of blowing up the character past what made her recognizable, and thereby funny, in the first place.

Should you see Sony’s new Ghostbusters remake? Yes. Yes, you should. Will you be entertained? Yes. Yes, you will. Will you also be a little annoyed? Well, yeah, probably...it’s all a bit too self-consciously self-conscious...

McCarthy clearly feels a connection to Israel’s outsider artistry, her utter commitment to become someone else for a few stolen moments, and her pride in a job well done...

Since Life of the Party shows little interest in investigating the satiric possibilities of the two-decade cultural gap in play, or a weirdly one-sided May-December romance, the movie wafts into disposable irrelevance long before the credits roll

Because of its hurried pacing, the film doesn’t quite make us feel the potentially Shakespearean sweep of this arc, and the leading performances feel similarly hemmed in by the script’s limitations.