The plot was all over the place and the whole theme of woman empowerment seemed lost in this film. Sandra Bullock's character is just painful to watch and while Melissa McCarthy's character is funny, she plays the same character over and over and it's becoming tired.
Is there really a theme of woman empowerment? There's lip service but it seems to me that the real theme is the joy of unchecked aggression. It's dramatized by McCarthy's antics, almost all of which are conventionally male. McCarthy even has to put up with clingy one-night stands with delusions about mattering. Bullock's Murtagh validates McCarthy's Riggs by the sincerest form of flattery. The edge of genuine violence in letting males carry on like this is mitigated by having women act out. I suppose you could play with the idea that the whole thing is a sendup of this overused shtick. But I think the movie is far too sincere in its pleasure at McCarthy's triumph of the id. I think the movie works because on one level at least it knows that comedy is conflict. (Yes, I know the cliché says drama is conflict, but this kind of muddy thinking is why so many talented people end up making mediocre or worse movies.)
I've only seen McCarthy before in Part III, but that was actually a different character.