"Tower Heist": B-. "Tower Heist" can be evaluated with three words: preposterous but entertaining. I was mostly hoping for at least entertaining when I attended the movie last night at the Hopkins Theater for $2.50. I did not have "Tower Heist" on my "must see" list - - probably nobody does - - but decided to go at the last minute.
Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is the manager of The Tower, a Park Central West high rise in New York City. The building is top drawer in every way, with state of the art security, a twenty-four hour concierge service, round the clock room service, a doorman and elevator operators, and enough staff to fulfill the residents' every whim, such as dog walking and grocery shopping. Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is a Wall Street tycoon who lives in the penthouse suite, complete with it's Olympic size swimming pool. We are introduced to Lester the doorman (Stephen Henderson), who is the coolest character in the movie, Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), the fired Merrill Lynch stock broker who's about to be evicted from The Tower, Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) from room service, Enrique (Michael Pena), the newly hired elevator operator, and an assortment of a few other folks who all work for the building management company. The company has a pension plan for its employees, but we aren't too far into the show before we find out that Shaw is being nailed by the FBI for embezzelment and fraud, and (as Hollywood luck would have it) that all the The Tower employees' pension money which Josh had entrusted to Shaw for investment is missing. Their life savings has vanished. The majority of the story details how Josh and his cronies seek to recover the money which they believe Shaw is hiding from the FBI, so that their co-workers can get their money back. Somehow they figure that Shaw has the money hidden in a secret vault in his penthouse. (This last example of deductive reasoning is just one of the many preposterous occurrences which occur in just about every scene in the movie.)
None of the participants in Josh's recovery scheme has experience in burglary, so Josh springs Slide (Eddie Murphy), a street punk from his neighborhood, from jail by posting bail and makes him a key part of the recovery scheme. As is typical of other Eddie Murphy characters, Slide does not trust Josh and his white bread homies, and the feeling is mutual.
In order to enjoy this film you have to suspend all expectations of reality and sensibility. Enjoy the one-liners, the action sequences and the special effects. You can probably guess how this story ends, but it is the journey, not the destination, that you are paying for when you buy your ticket of admission.
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