TOWER HEIST
Directed by: Brett Ratner
Written by: Ted Griffin, Jeff Nathanson
Starring: Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Tea Leoni
TOWER HEIST was written a few years ago but sadly it’s as prevalent today as it was then.
You know the story: a group of ripped off employees at a luxury condo in New York plan revenge on the evil investment banker, Arthur Shaw (Alda) who did them wrong and lost all their money. The timeliness of the movie works in its favor, you can’t help but root for Ben Stiller and his crew as they seek revenge because the anti-corporate mood is so strong in America today. Are they breaking the law? Well, yeah but Alan Alda is a gross investment banker who stole millions! Groans and gasps were heard in the audience when Shaw’s crimes were listed. This is a guy you will really dislike.
The characters here are the film’s strongest feature and that’s mostly due to the performers. Stiller does a reliable job as Josh Kovacs, the hard-working, devoted hotel manager. His opening scene consists of making small talk with co-workers and showing his encyclopedic knowledge of the residents at the tower. He’s such a nice guy! He loves his job! He’s obviously our hero! Stiller is a bit edgier than normal in TOWER HEIST and he employees a New York accent to add on a layer of working man toughness. It works even though the accent comes and goes throughout the film’s run time. The rest of the characters are also uniformly likable, from Casey Affleck’s Charlie to Matthew Broderick’s unemployed sad sack Mr. Fitzugh. Michael Pena also does a memorable job as Enrique, the empty-headed but good-hearted new employee who joins in on the plan.
But the real star of TOWER HEIST is Eddie Murphy of course. Giving him his big comeback performance, writers Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson play to Murphy’s strengths, providing him with biting dialogue and a wild character who can be loud, obnoxious and dangerous in a way only Eddie Murphy can. It’s fun to see him have lively material again and almost – almost! – makes you forget about NORBIT and MEET DAVE. The guy can really light up the screen when he wants to.
Fun characters aside, there are a few major flaws in TOWER HEIST that prevent it from being a bonafide success, all of which come back to the rather tame and half-baked script. For example, the heist itself. A movie like this needs a really clever sequence at the end. Simply put, a heist film needs a great, well, heist. That goes without saying, right? While the actual job in the final third of TOWER HEIST is fun to watch (and gets better as it goes on) it’s so painfully plain that you can’t help but wonder why the screenwriters didn’t give it another draft. The plan to steal back millions is literally “Well, we go in and we steal it.” At every turn there is a chance to liven things up and inject something new and refreshing but Griffin and Nathanson instead stick to a very linear, basic idea, save for one twist that you can see coming from the beginning of the film.
And while the cast is filled with some wonderful actors, a few of them get the short end of the stick. Tea Leoni and Gabourey Sidibe are just two of the performers who are wasted, especially Sidibe who has such an odd, quirky character but is only used well in one scene. Even Murphy isn’t given as much as he should have been. He disappears for a chunk towards the end and is painfully missed. Other characters (Affleck, Leoni) are shuffled around throughout the film, coming in and out when the script needs them. It’s a bizarre move that makes the film feel disjointed and unpolished.
But the script isn’t awful, in fact there are a few surprising bright spots: a very funny conversation that devolves into a rambling talk about lesbians, a moment with an old lady and her tiny pooch, a sequence featuring each character attempting petty theft. These out-of-left-field moments feel fresh and give us more character than anything that comes in the heist itself. Sadly, their presence confirms that the script missed the mark in some major ways. These scenes show what type of film TOWER HEIST could have been: crude, witty and somewhat absurd instead of simple, unsurprising and by-the-numbers.
Much has been made about the populist plot of TOWER HEIST. It’s definitely a crowd-pleasing film, the screening I attended was filled with laughter and applause. I have no doubt that the movie will find an audience who don’t nitpick and complain about the flaws I’ve highlighted. In that regard, the film is an overwhelming success and people will go crazy for it. That’s all well and good and even I admit that I liked the movie. Yet, it’s so close to being something really special that its good-but-not-great standing is a bummer. TOWER HEIST is a fine movie, don’t get me wrong. But it could have been truly wonderful.
