Tower Heist (2011)

The main problem that I have with Tower Heist goes back to the basic fundamentals of filmmaking-that all stories have a shorter exposition, a rising action that gets you pumped for the climax, and then the climax of the film, which is supposed to be the highlight of the film. But the highlight of the film never really seems to come. The actual robbery, which is about 20 minutes of the 100 minute film, while is fun to watch, just lacks the excitement or jokes it needs to float the film. The entire film is just being bogged down by the fact that it’s not that funny, which makes me sad. Because I love seeing a return to form for Eddie Murphy, making funny movies. And I also love Ben Stiller, and he is such a funny guy, but here he’s just not funny. And that is a bad thing.

Starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, Tower Heist is almost an amateur-version of Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, about Josh Kovacs (Stiller), a building manager who manages The Tower, a fancy apartment complex owned by Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), who ends up taking the money of everybody working in the Tower who let him invest with a Ponzi-style scheme. So, Josh, concierge Charlie (Casey Affleck), evicted tenant/bankrupt investor Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), bellhop Enrique (Michael Pena), maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), and low-rent criminal Slide (Murphy), all team up to try to rob Shaw of the $20 million dollars he has hidden in his penthouse apartment. And watching the robbery is fun and kind of funny when it gets back down to it, but we’re treated to a full exposition that takes about an hour, and then just more filler for thirty minutes. And I wouldn’t really mind the filler if it was funny, but the big problem with this movie is that it’s just not that funny. The jokes needed to be much more clever, the characters more realistic and loose, and the direction needs to pull back a little bit. Brett Ratner, the guy who directed Rush Hour and its less-than-perfect sequels (not that Rush Hour is perfect), and got fired from producing the Academy Awards and subsequently had Eddie Murphy quit the awards because of his “loyalty” to the director.

In short, Tower Heist is a film that should be a whole lot better. It should be a lot of fun, it should be really funny, but it’s really just not. I’m just not having a lot of fun watching it. I love heist films, and I love comedies. So when you’ve made a heist comedy starring Ben Stiller and it feels like a chore, something went wrong here.
6/10