Laughs in short supply in absurd 'Tower Heist'
By taking humorously cathartic revenge against Alan Alda's Bernie Madoff stand-in, zillionaire Arthur Shaw, Brett Ratner's caper comedy "Tower Heist" might have benefited from the anti-Wall Street mood sweeping the nation.
But Ratner's ridiculous, rambling, chuckle-challenged comedy narrowly avoids inviting its own brand of "Occupy Tower Heist" protests.
In New York's poshest high-rise, the Tower, building manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) presides over a happy, self-fulfilled staff of service workers - a dead giveaway that something bad will happen soon.
The feds come to arrest Shaw for fraud. The billions of dollars in assets have vanished, along with the retirement savings of all the Tower employees, including Josh.
Then Claire (Tea Leoni), a friendly FBI agent, tips off Josh that she's looking for about $20 million in unaccounted funds that Shaw has squirreled away in a secret place.
Josh remembers that Shaw had a new safe installed in his penthouse apartment several years earlier. He decides that with the help of his fellow ripped-off staffers, he can break into Shaw's safe and recover everyone's losses.
He picks his crew:
Charlie (Casey Affleck), his mealy-mouthed incompetent assistant
Enrique (Chicago's own Michael Pena), a new hire who's taken an online course in electronics from DeVry
Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), a Jamaican maid whose dad taught her safe-cracking
Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), a bankrupt finance planner abandoned by his family and kicked out of his residence during a bank seizure.
Josh realizes he needs a real pro to break into a Manhattan penthouse with state-of-the-art security systems and a sophisticated safe.
So he recruits a neighborhood thief named Slide (producer Eddie Murphy), a street hustler who steals stuff off balconies, but never anything more than $1,000 to avoid felony charges.
What? This is the setup?
<I>Really?</I>
"Tower Heist" is the kind of absurd action comedy you get when you have eight people listed as writers and not one has a strong vision about what the final movie should be.
Ratner's movie could only work as a broad spoof of caper movies featuring criminal disaster-minds. Think "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" or "The Apple Dumpling Gang."
For a while, "Tower Heist" operates on the funny, idiotic premise that the would-be burglars suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder and are so easily distracted that there's no way they can pull off a group discussion, let alone a high-precision heist.
Then, "Tower Heist" improbably morphs into a "Mission Impossible" thriller with preposterous stunts involving Shaw's prized possession, a vintage sports car driven by Steve McQueen, all staged during Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Broderick's trademark talent for underplaying reactions quietly steals the show from co-stars Stiller and Murphy, who recycle their familiar personas rewarmed from earlier comedies.
Broderick utters the film's funniest line: "The maid's gone rogue!"
It's not even a joke. But Broderick's delivery is a killer.
<b>“Tower Heist”</b>
★ ★
Starring: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Tea Leoni, Alan Alda, Casey Affleck
Directed by: Brett Ratner
Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual situations. 99 minutes