Review of Tower Heist - Fumbles its impressive cast via lazy storytelling.
The timing is perfect for Tower Heist, a tale about blue-collar employers pulling off the ultimate caper against a wealthy crook who stole their pension funds. It’s a story of the working-class 99% battling the fat cat 1% without the Occupy Wall Street grit and political rhetoric.
Tower Heist, director Brett Ratner’s first directing gig since Rush Hour 3 in 2007, is can’t-miss formula moviemaking with an impressive cast that still manages to botch matters due to lazy storytelling, predictable outcomes, dangling subplots and cliché characters.
Ben Stiller is Josh Kovacs, the dedicated building manager of a luxury Manhattan high-rise who lost the pensions for his entire staff to a Bernie Madoff-inspired character named Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) under house arrest in the building’s penthouse condo.
The chuckles begin when Kovacs enlists select staff members (Casey Affleck and Gabourey Sidibe); an evicted resident (Matthew Broderick) and a neighborhood thief (Eddie Murphy) to plot a heist to find Shaw’s hidden stash and get the money back for his co-workers.
Kovacs schedules the theft for Thanksgiving, the Super Bowl for the high-rise staff with 43 residents hosting parties and the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade at their front door.
Stiller enjoys one laugh-out-loud scene where he takes a golf club and shatters the classic Ferrari Shaw displays in his penthouse living room.
After that one early scene, all Stiller can manage are a few chuckles but no big laughs.
Téa Leoni goes through the motions in a cookie cutter role of a FBI agent investigating the villainous Shaw and who falls for the kind-hearted Kovacs.
Eddie Murphy has fun as the street hood named Slide recruited to help out Kovacs and his first-time crooks get back their money. Murphy is at his smartass best in the film’s final scenes but the dull storytelling weighs him down for most of the movie.
The saddest performance belongs to Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) who sinks under the weight of ludicrous Jamaican accent.
Only Alan Alda exits the movie with his integrity intact. Alda plays his 1% villain with vicious glee and channels Lionel Barrymore’s It's a Wonderful Life performance as Henry F. Potter with a dab of Scrooge McDuck on the side.
It’s hard to believe an army of writers took turns with the script over four years, including Noah Baumbach, Leslie Dixon, Ted Griffin, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage and Jeff Nathanson, since it’s painfully mediocre.
Give credit to Ratner, who worked with Nathanson on the enjoyable Rush Hour movies, for changing the plot from the kidnapping of Donald Trump to a Madoff-like villain.
It’s the one clever movie in a comedy riddled with missed opportunities.
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Cast: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick, Judd Hirsch, Téa Leoni, Gabourey Sidibe
Screenwriter: Ted Griffin, Jeff Nathanson, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage
Director: Brett Ratner
Editor: Mark Helfrich
Composer: Christophe Beck
Cinematography: Dante Spinotti
Producers: Relativity Media, Rat Entertainment, Imagine Entertainment
Running Time: 104 minutes
Rating: Rated PG-13
Release Date: Nov. 4, 2011