TURNIN’ UP

Paul Feig’s clichéd but often very funny comedy “The Heat” would be a fairly ordinary entry in the female buddy cop genre except ... there is no genre yet. Happily, Melissa McCarthy may single-handedly change that.

It’s amazing that by 2013, there have never been two women paired together in this kind of comedy. Then again, Hollywood often lags several decades behind. It takes money to push this industry ahead, and if “The Heat” is a hit, we ought to see more of its kind.

That said, nothing else is new about Katie Dippold’s script, which — aside from the nowrequisite jokes about lady parts — feels like a retread of countless movies before it. Thank heavens, then, for the vastly talented McCarthy. She gives the film a riotous, improvisatory wildness it’s otherwise lacking.

McCarthy’s gruff Detective Mullins is a take-no-prisoners cop on the meanest streets of Boston. She’s not, in other words, the type to welcome uptight FBI agent Ashburn (Sandra Bullock), who arrives to investigate a local druglord. Ashburn always plays by the book, while Mullins is more likely to tear all the pages out and stuff them down a perp’s throat.

I’d like to say there are surprises in this mismatched pairing, but if you’ve seen any “Lethal Weapon,” you know just how it goes. The primary additions, unfortunately, are surprisingly nasty cracks about aging or single ladies, and the choreographed song-and-dance number apparently required by studios when two or more actresses get together.

The subplots, about Ashburn’s cute co-worker (Marlon Wayans) and Mullins’ nutty family (including Michael Rapaport and