Tower Heist
When someone steals from you, what is the first thing you want to do? Steal back of course! However, does this robbery go off without a hitch? Let's find out.
In a hotel building simply known as The Tower, the man that runs the building, Josh Kovaks (Ben Stiller), tries to keep the place in tip top condition. His most well known tenant, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), is Josh's best friend and one of the richest people around. Josh meets their new employee, Enrique Dev'Reaux (Michael Pena). He doesn't have much experience with the hotel business, but eventually, Josh introduces him to the other employees and Arthur. After some time, Arthur is acused of stealing money from people, namely everyone in The Tower. So Josh, Enrique, and another employee, Charlie (Casey Affleck), go up to voice their thoughts to Arthur. This ends up getting the three fired. So Josh ends up chatting with Special Agent Claire Denham (Tea Leoni), the FBI agent that arrested Shaw, to see what he can learn about the arrest. Eventually, Josh gets some of the ex-employees of The Tower together, Enrique, Charlie, Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), and Josh's neighbor, Slide (Eddie Murphy), to plan a way to sneak into Shaw's room and get their money back from him.
For starters, Eddie Murphy was hilarious in this movie. While he doesn't start off funny in the few seconds that you see him early on in the movie, once the heist is planned and they bail him out of prison, he starts becoming the old Murphy that most of us know and love. While he could be seen as a racist stereotype of blacks, seeing as how he's a thief living in the ghetto, it's just one of those things you'll have to ignore in order to fully enjoy the movie. As for the heist itself, it's really fun to watch. The planning stage has quite a few laughs. There's some twists to their plan that cause some problems, and once they actually get into Shaw's room, it's nothing but fun time from then on.
However, this movie has more bad than good. While Eddie Murphy was hilarious, he was the only one that could was even remotely funny. Yeah, Odessa was sort of funny, but she didn't have nearly as many laughs as Murphy. Stiller's jokes failed pretty much every time, but he seems to be taking a more serious approach, so you can't really blame him. As for the rest of the cast, their equally unfunny. There's also some moments during the actual heist where extremely critical people would sit there and judge, such as a guard getting distracted by a Playboy magazine for 6 hours. However, those moments are far and few between.
So would I recommend Tower Heist? Not really. As a comedy, it falls flat on its face. One funny man is not enough to carry an entire movie. As a heist film, it works, but only if you can buy into some of the more unbelievable moments of the heist.
In a hotel building simply known as The Tower, the man that runs the building, Josh Kovaks (Ben Stiller), tries to keep the place in tip top condition. His most well known tenant, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), is Josh's best friend and one of the richest people around. Josh meets their new employee, Enrique Dev'Reaux (Michael Pena). He doesn't have much experience with the hotel business, but eventually, Josh introduces him to the other employees and Arthur. After some time, Arthur is acused of stealing money from people, namely everyone in The Tower. So Josh, Enrique, and another employee, Charlie (Casey Affleck), go up to voice their thoughts to Arthur. This ends up getting the three fired. So Josh ends up chatting with Special Agent Claire Denham (Tea Leoni), the FBI agent that arrested Shaw, to see what he can learn about the arrest. Eventually, Josh gets some of the ex-employees of The Tower together, Enrique, Charlie, Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), and Josh's neighbor, Slide (Eddie Murphy), to plan a way to sneak into Shaw's room and get their money back from him.
For starters, Eddie Murphy was hilarious in this movie. While he doesn't start off funny in the few seconds that you see him early on in the movie, once the heist is planned and they bail him out of prison, he starts becoming the old Murphy that most of us know and love. While he could be seen as a racist stereotype of blacks, seeing as how he's a thief living in the ghetto, it's just one of those things you'll have to ignore in order to fully enjoy the movie. As for the heist itself, it's really fun to watch. The planning stage has quite a few laughs. There's some twists to their plan that cause some problems, and once they actually get into Shaw's room, it's nothing but fun time from then on.
However, this movie has more bad than good. While Eddie Murphy was hilarious, he was the only one that could was even remotely funny. Yeah, Odessa was sort of funny, but she didn't have nearly as many laughs as Murphy. Stiller's jokes failed pretty much every time, but he seems to be taking a more serious approach, so you can't really blame him. As for the rest of the cast, their equally unfunny. There's also some moments during the actual heist where extremely critical people would sit there and judge, such as a guard getting distracted by a Playboy magazine for 6 hours. However, those moments are far and few between.
So would I recommend Tower Heist? Not really. As a comedy, it falls flat on its face. One funny man is not enough to carry an entire movie. As a heist film, it works, but only if you can buy into some of the more unbelievable moments of the heist.