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Monday, November 7, 2011

MOVIE REVIEW
Tower Heist

Another Day, Another Entertaining Mess Of A Robbery



The plan Stan: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick and Gabourey Sidibe in Brett Ratner's "Tower Heist". 
Universal
  

by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Mond
ay, November 7, 2011

How do you get a car from the penthouse to the street without anyone noticing?  You don't.  You just hope for the best, which is what "Tower Heist", a heist comedy caper which opened over the weekend in the U.S. and Canada, seeks to do. 

New York City's wealthiest investor Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) has an apartment at The Tower (aka Trump International Tower) and soon we find out he's a criminal on the Madoff scale.  Many have been fleeced of their pensions, including the "help" staff who work at The Tower.  Several employees, Josh (Ben Stiller), Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), Enrique (Michael Peña) and Charlie (Casey Affleck) plot their revenge by stealing from Shaw.  Federal agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni) is on to Shaw and this motley crew of mischievous marauders.

"Tower Heist", written by Ted Griffin and "Rush Hour" scribe Jeff Nathanson, relies on little more than one's ability to ignore a rather poor screenplay and have a good time laughing it up.  Characters change their spots faster than any leopard would ever dare to, and numerous situations make little sense.  "We don't take tips here at the Tower," several employees say, but that doesn't stop them from trying to take $40 million from the same person who offered the tip. 

Mr. Ratner's film is entertaining to the extent we see Eddie Murphy, raucously funny for about five minutes before the welcome mat is worn, but Mr. Murphy's character Slide is recruited for the foolhardy robbery in the same way Jamie Foxx was for murder in "Horrible Bosses" earlier this year.  "Let's get someone who's great at stealing," says one character.  And what do you know, it's the black man who can!  This bit of racist stereotyping falls flat on its face, and Universal Pictures (which released both "Bosses" and "Tower Heist") has some explaining to do.  (For good though unrelated measure Universal Pictures was also the subject of a racial discrimination lawsuit three or four years ago.)

Other heist comedies have trodden this terrain better and less predictably.  "Quick Change" (1990), a snappy, thrifty New York caper with Bill Murray and Geena Davis directed by Howard Franklin and Mr. Murray, was sharper and more savvy than this boneheaded mess.  It's worth taking another look at that film, which gets less bogged down in minutiae than "Tower Heist" tries to. 

Mr. Stiller and Mr. Murphy look mismatched on the big screen together and often their characters live in different universes.  Mr. Peña, fresh from a jaunt of nasty stereotyping in the deplorable "30 Minutes Or Less", isn't too far removed from that film here.  The racial jokes and jabs and other assorted running jokes just aren't funny. 

"Tower Heist" is a film that needed to be reconnoitered, heisted, overhauled and re-engineered. 

With: Judd Hirsch, Nina Arianda, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Juan Carlos Hernandez.


"Tower Heist" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association Of America for  language and sexual content.  The film's running time is one hour and 44 minutes.


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