Two comedy powers collide as Ben Stiller (‘Night At The Museum’, ‘Zoolander’) meets Eddie Murphy (errr… well he was good in the eighties) for 'Tower Heist'.
Josh (Ben Stiller) is the building manager of an expensive high rise in Manhattan, where the wealthy residents pay a hefty sum to have their every whim seen to by Josh and his staff. The building is owned by the eccentric Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) a man for whom Josh has a lot of respect. That is, until financial misdealing reveals Shaw has lost all his money, including the staff’s pensions. With his staff bereft, Josh learns that all financial crooks tend to have a ‘failsafe’ amount of cash should they need to flee the country, and so he teams up with new employee Dev’reaux (Micheal Pena); his brother-in-law (Casey Affleck); a suicidal, broke stock genius (Matthew Broderick) and his criminally inclined neighbour Slide (Eddie Murphy) to do the unthinkable - break into their own tower and steal back their money.
It may have been 20 years since Murphy was in anything special, but Stiller has been consistently producing genuinely funny comedy classics for most of his career. This may not be among his best, but it is an incredibly likeable and often very funny caper, thanks to a well assembled cast and an amusing script. The motley crew of would-be robbers make for a good unit, with a witty script overcoming Brett Ratner’s insistence on making every shot as glossy as possible.
As mentioned, it’s the cast that make this, as several solid comedy actors combine. Stiller himself is a little more muted than usual, playing it straight for the most part allowing his cast mates to shine, and shine they do. Among the best is, surprisingly, Broderick, whose doe-eyed tragi-comedy is subtle but hilarious, while Gabourey Sidibe (‘Precious’) is chuckle-worthy as the Caribbean chamber maid, and Casey Affleck is solid. Outside of the chuckles, Alan Alda is brilliantly diabolical as the fat cat who doesn’t care about his employees. Murphy is really allowed to just be wacky, and because he’s not carrying the plot he‘s just left to be funny. It’s not a return to form by any means, but he doesn’t bomb, which is the best we can hope for from the actor nowadays.
It won’t have you rolling in the aisles, but it won’t make you run for the exit either. The personalities involved make it a light, entertaining film that feels like a comedy version of ‘Ocean’s 11’, and delivers harmless, Hollywood polished laughs from beginning to end.
'Tower Heist' is on general release.
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