‘The Heat’s’ box-office success: How groundbreaking is it?

The female-comedy renaissance epitomized by “Bridesmaids� added a new notch to its holster this weekend with the success of “The Heat.�

Featuring slapstick physical comedy and a plot involving a mysterious Keyser Soze-like drug dealer (I’ll admit I spent part of the movie secretly hoping Kevin Spacey would make an appearance), the Sandra Bullock-Melissa McCarthy ditty came up with a tidy $40-million opening on a budget of barely more than that. It was the biggest new opening of the week and is a bona fide hit for 20th Century Fox.

Of course, the talk of renaissance is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not as if there’s been a ton of such films put on the fast track since “Bridesmaids� achieved blockbuster status two years ago. Besides, female-led comedies, though admittedly rare, aren’t exactly new either, with a trajectory that goes from “Desperately Seeking Susan� to “Sister Act� to “Miss Congeniality.�

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In fact, much of the breathlessness over female comedies feels a little like the clueless reaction many of us in the media had when Tyler Perry was on a Madea-enabled hot streak a few years back. A new movie comes out and turns into a hit, and we express surprise and say we never saw it coming. Then a year later, another movie comes out and we do it all over again.

What’s actually new about “The Heat� is not the fact that comedies starring, and appealing to, women can become a major hit (and appealing to is not an understatement: As my colleague Rebecca Keegan writes, the audience this weekend was two-thirds female), but that these movies are now frequently be R-rated. Many of the female-led comedy smashes from earlier eras were of the PG-13 variety. Those that have become hits in recent years -- “Sex and the City,� “Bad Teacher,� “Bridesmaids,� “The Heat� -- have been of the raunchier sort.

That’s a trend that isn’t limited to female-centric comedies, of course. The R-rating has been a primary feature of male-driven comedies in recent years as well, starting with “The 40-Year-Old Virgin� and “Borat� in the mid-2000s, and continuing this season with yet another crop.

The male side, needless to say, has not had the same batting average as the female one; for every “This Is The End� or “Ted� there’s a “Hangover Part 3� or a “Change-Up.� Like so many trends, the first few in a subgenre succeed because they’re novel, the next few can still work because they’re admirable mimics, and then many of the rest fail because they’re overkill. A foul-mouthed apocalyptic comedy with actors playing exaggerated versions of themselves feels fresh. But we don’t necessarily need a sequel or concept-extension (“This Is Really The End�?) to feel like we’ve gotten our fill.

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It’s here where the female-led comedy boom seems to be in such an important but precarious place. It’s worth noting that two of the crop of female-led R-rated comedies have shared a pair of specific elements -- director Paul Feig and star Melissa McCarthy, who in addition to “The Heat� also collaborated on “Bridesmaids.� “Bad Teacher,� a third in the lot, involved different directors and stars, but it’s no surprise that Sony is also looking to duplicate its success by going for a sequel.

This category of movies has succeeded despite -- or because -- it hasn’t expanded in every lamebrained direction in the manner of the male pics. And we might well be better off if female-centric comedies (as in other areas of life) didn’t follow down the guys’ foolish path.

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