Ever since Paul Feig launched Melissa McCarthy’s movie star career with her supporting role in Bridesmaids, the two have created some unique projects. After working on Bridesmaids, Feig and McCarthy reteamed for the “buddy cop” action comedy The Heat, the spy spoof aptly titled Spy, and the all-female Ghostbusters reboot. Before working with Feig, McCarthy was best known for playing Sookie St. James on Gilmore Girls. But now, she’s a globally recognizable A-list star of the silver screen. McCarthy is one of the few actors who can still draw audiences to a movie based on their involvement alone.
Bridesmaids was conceived as a starring vehicle for Kristen Wiig, but it ended up being just as much of a showcase for McCarthy. Feig has since given McCarthy a wide range of roles to play, from a female Martin Riggs to a female James Bond. Whether she’s playing a side character, part of an ensemble, or a taking the spotlight in a lead role, McCarthy always steals the show. However, while Bridesmaids was universally praised as one of the greatest comedies of the 21st century, not all of Feig and McCarthy’s subsequent collaborations have managed to live up to it.
4 Ghostbusters
With 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.8 on IMDb, Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot was warmly received by both critics and audiences. It’s a fun supernatural comedy with a great cast, but, sadly, it fails to live up to its iconic predecessor. 2016’s Ghostbusters suffers from bearing the name of one of the greatest comedies ever made, inviting comparisons to a timeless classic. Rather than taking place in the same universe as the original Ghostbusters movies, the reboot is essentially a remake with a new group of paranormal scientists going into business for themselves and saving New York from a ghostly invasion.
McCarthy is backed up by three hilarious Saturday Night Live cast members: Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and McCarthy’s Bridesmaids co-star Wiig. These hilarious actors bring their A-game to the Ghostbusters reboot, but they are let down by a script that’s more focused on effects-heavy set-pieces than laughs. In the original Ghostbusters movie, the big, effects-laden finale pays off a great joke, as Ray accidentally thinks about the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and turns the corporate mascot into a kaiju-sized terror. But the reboot’s climactic sequence isn’t driven by a joke engine like that; it’s just a Marvel-style, CGI-laden final battle.
3 The Heat
After Bridesmaids made them two of the most sought-after talents in Hollywood, Feig and McCarthy changed gears from the romcom genre to create their own iconic “buddy cop” movie. The Heat was a big hit with audiences, but garnered a lukewarm reception from critics, with a middling 66% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a rating of 6.6 on IMDb. The movie is anchored by incredible on-screen chemistry shared by McCarthy and her A-list co-star Sandra Bullock, but its plot is a by-the-numbers procedural. Bullock plays an uptight FBI agent on the trail of a notorious drug kingpin and McCarthy plays the foul-mouthed, hotheaded Boston detective she’s paired up with.
Unlike the more subversive Hot Fuzz and The Other Guys, The Heat follows the “buddy cop” formula pretty closely. One is a straight-laced follower while the other is a roguish maverick who will happily break the law in order to enforce it. But McCarthy relishes the opportunity to play the latter as a brash, abrasive loudmouth and Bullock makes a likable comic foil as the much more sensible voice of reason. The Heat’s story is nothing special, with predictable twists and uninspired villains, but its appeal isn’t its narrative; it’s the characters and their dynamic.
2 Spy
After putting their stamp on the “buddy cop” genre with The Heat, Feig and McCarthy set their sights on a different action subgenre to satirize next. Their spy movie, titled Spy, was met with widespread critical acclaim. It has an impressive 7.0 rating on IMDb and a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 95%. McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a CIA desk jockey who provides tech support for field agent Bradley Fine while dreaming of going into the field herself. When Fine is seemingly killed in the field and the other agents are compromised, Susan finally gets her chance to travel the globe and save the world.
Spy is a wonderfully subversive spoof of the James Bond formula. All the familiar hallmarks of a 007 adventure are given an absurdist spin in Feig’s sharply crafted script. When Fine is regaling his target with a quippy Bondian one-liner, he sneezes, accidentally pulls the trigger, and kills him before getting the information he needs. When Susan is given her spy gadgets by a Q-like inventor, they’re all tailored to her cover as a mild-mannered tourist (like hemorrhoid wipes filled with chloroform and an antifungal spray that can disable locks).
McCarthy ably carries the movie, but she’s backed up by scene-stealing supporting players like Miranda Hart as her dry, deadpan best friend and Jason Statham as a hilariously exaggerated version of the 007 archetype. Spy takes big, broad comedic swings, but there’s a sincerity at the heart of the movie. As an underdog who’s underestimated by everybody around her, Susan is easy to root for. Spy is both an old-fashioned espionage caper honoring the genre’s traditions and a progressive subversion of the genre bearing the message that anyone can be an action hero.
1 Bridesmaids
The movie that launched both Feig and McCarthy to stardom, Bridesmaids scored 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.8 on IMDb. Wiig stars as Annie, who’s forced to take a look at her own life when her best friend Lillian gets engaged. McCarthy is part of a hysterical ensemble that includes Maya Rudolph as Lillian, Rose Byrne as the villainous Helen Harris III, who tries to usurp Annie as Lillian’s best friend, and Wendi McLendon-Covey as Rita, who’s grown bitter after years of marriage. McCarthy plays Megan, Lillian’s sister-in-law-to-be, the crudest but also the friendliest of Lillian’s bridesmaids.
The Academy usually ignores comedies, but Bridesmaids earned two major nominations: Best Original Screenplay for Wiig and her co-writer Annie Mumolo and Best Supporting Actress for McCarthy. There’s no dead weight in the Bridesmaids cast – everybody in this ensemble is a comedy heavyweight – but McCarthy gets the biggest laughs in the movie. Whether she’s pooping in a sink, overcommitting to the full-time care of a dozen puppies, or telling the story of how she fell off a cruise ship and communicated telepathically with a dolphin, McCarthy steals every scene she’s in. Without McCarthy and Feige's involvement, Bridesmaids might not have been as memorable as it was.