Tower Heist

As I've mentioned before, comedy is my favorite genre. So when I saw my first trailer of "Tower Heist", I thought, Wow! A film I can sink my teeth into and get a great laugh or two. Well, except for a few inconsistencies and implausibilities, it definitely delivered.

This takes place at a very posh high-rise tower owned by one Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), who is a very wealthy business man who, by permission of the top consierge, Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller), invests the staff's retirement fund. The one thing Kovacs didn't realize was the fact that Shaw is involved in a huge ponzi scheme and subsequently lost all of the the staff's money including Kovac's. When confronted with this problem, Shaw basically shrugged it off as the staff making a very bad investment and there was nothing he could do. This is all Kovacs needed to hear, because he congregates his staff together to ask if they'll conspire with him to steal their money back from Shaw. Not all agree except for Charlie (Casey Affleck), Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) who is actually a Wall Street victim resident, Lester (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the doorman, Enrique (Michael Pena), and Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe). But how can they mastermind a crime of these proportions? Enters Slide (Eddie Murphy), whom Kovacs runs into on the street. Kovacs propositions Slide about the 'job', because they need a seasoned pro to show them the ropes. Can they really pull it off?

Others to round out the cast are Judd Hirsch as Mr. Simon, Kovacs' boss, and Tea Leoni as Special Agent Claire Denham who tries to get the goods on Shaw.

As aforementioned, the implausibilities insue when this staff is being shown the ropes by a basic petty crook, Slide. Com'on, the staff are obviously not pros and then they bring this small time crook in to assist with a high-profile robbery or heist. This is a bit implausible, but then there wouldn't be a film and this being a comedy, one can get away with it. So Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson wrote a script that was not only funny, but even with the implausible script, you can still forgive, for the fact of the genre: comedy.

This was effectively directed by Brett Ratner ("Money Talks" '97, "Rush Hour" '98, "The Family Man" 2000, "Rush Hour 2" '01, "Red Dragon" '02, "After the Sunset" '04, "X-Men:The Last Stand" '06, "Rush Hour 3" '07, "New York, I Love You" (Segment "Brett Ratner") '09, "Cop House"-TV movie, '09). He definitely has proven time and again that he can handle comedy.
The cast is eclectic, however their chemistry works well off of one another. Broderick as Mr. Fitzhugh was great in that he basically had not much else to live for, because he lost everything in the market, lost his wife, kids, etc. So taking part in a heist just became another thing to do on the 'to do list' for the day. Stiller still played his self-loathing but constantly trying to right the wrongs, and Murphy plays his usual over-the-top performance that Murphy can always pull off.

This is certainly one of the best comedies I've seen in a while, however considering of the poor comedies lately, mostly because of poor writing, this is certainly not giving "Tower Heist" much credit.

Out of 4 stars: 3                     Rated: PG-13                       104min.