“It’s a Code Blue-Black!”
Swift Shot: If you have been dying to have the REAL Eddie Murphy back, this one is a good jump-start to hopefully more adult features in the near future. He doesn’t talk to animals, marry a dragon, nor cavort with an ogre [although Shrek does make a cameo], Murphy isn’t throwing his weight around in a fat suit and he doesn’t drop one F-Bomb, but still he manages to steal every scene. But, this was a film with a pretty impressive cast even without Murphy. Save for a few terrible accents and not quite enough raunchiness for my liking, this film handled the curves like a ’63 Lusso at Riverview!
Tower Heist is a little bit Oceans Eleven meets Horrible Bosses – you have a revenge take-down heist caper in the works, but unlike Oceans Eleven, these are hardly the Usual Suspects you would want as accomplices. In that way, it’s a lot like Horrible Bosses, where the average Joe gets stirred up enough to commit a felony, or two, or three, I lost count – see if any of my cop friends can tally the rap sheets.
Alan Alda plays the slimy Madoff-like Arthur Shaw, or is Shaw being setup by the Feds as a corporate fall-guy? I don’t want to give anything away, but Shaw is simply in love with himself, considers himself the master of all things business and when the time for reckoning comes, he moves his pieces around enough to confuse the best white-collar agents. Shaw’s slave is Josh Kovacs (Stiller), a building manager completely immersed in providing perfection to the tenants of his beloved Tower. A familiar phrase of the Tower employees, “We don’t accept tips at the Tower.” As with Towering Inferno, the Tower develops into a de facto character of the film along with one other inorganic character that helps put wheels on the script.
Josh has come to believe that Shaw has embezzled from everyone, including some people he cares very much for, so he enlists the help of a few like-minded victims of Shaw and sets out to steal about twenty million dollars, no big whoop. Thing is, while they all have motives, they lack any criminal skills, so Josh turns to the only real criminal he knows, Slide (Murphy). All the buildup to this eventual, erratic, full throttle “interview” with Slide is necessary to tease the audience hoping for a more Axel Foley type Murphy. I wasn’t disappointed.
The crew of criminals is cast by Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Michael Pena, and eventually Gabourey Sidibe, and while they all bring a special element to the heist, some were better on screen than others. I love freakin’ Matthew Broderick, but I kept thinking, why is he in this film, what is he really contributing? Then, HIS scene happened and the audience was loving it!
With buddy films, a lot of character wash takes place, and no one really stands out. Still, the chemistry was just good enough to chip away at my cynical shell and reveal some golden moments of comedy. I particularly enjoyed the Snoopy factor and the gauntlet of lesbians. Sorry, to get that reference you’ll have to see the film; I know most of you will eventually see it if you are pining for some old-school Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood humor.
I was impressed to see Brett Ratner directed this and Brian Grazer produced, two of my favorite film-makers, because I actually like pop-corn flicks, if I want a cerebral cinematic experience, I prefer that at home on Blu Ray where I don’t have to contend with the masses constantly pissing me off. But, with this film, one poor bastage in the back row was laughing so uncontrollably that it sounded like a horse and a pig were makin’ bacon, which made all of us laugh even more. So, Tower Heist had some solid laughs, albeit some poor timing by the less worthy cast-members. If you are a film snob, you’ll catch the scenes that were just a little off.
I recommend checking out Tower Heist in theaters, it doesn’t have a lot of over-the-top action, but it does have some good cinematography that will be lost at home. But, if you must wait til it hits stores, watch it with a friend who really loves Eddie Murphy!
