Review: "Tower Heist"

The tower in “Tower Heist” is, literally, The Tower, a Trump Towers-esque palatial home to the Manhattan super-rich elite who live there and the small army of working-class stiffs who keep their pillows fluffed and the old ladies’ frou-frou dogs walked. The bad guy is a Bernie Madoff-style oligarch who gleefully steals from the rich and the not-so-rich alike, pocketing it all and depending on his money and connections to protect him from the Defarges of the world.

The heist part takes up the second half of the movie, as Ben Stiller leads a team of amateur thieves – and one professional, played by Eddie Murphy – into The Tower penthouse to reclaim their stolen pension money. It’s all about the righteous 99 percent thwarting the evil 1 percent.

It’s like Occupy Wall Street, rewritten as a goofy caper comedy.

I did not buy any of the characters in the movie as real people, and the mechanics of the actual heist doesn’t so much strain credulity as smash it into little pieces and stomp on it. At one point the film asks us to believe that hundreds of thousands of people attending the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade could be looking up into the air at all the floats, and not one of them notices something astonishing taking place at the top of The Tower.

Still, once the actual heist gets going, the movie revs up a decent amount of momentum and finds some sustainable laughs. It’s not quite enough to recommend it, but I’ll admit “Tower Heist” is a lot better than my exceedingly low expectations.

The first thing any potential ticket-buyer needs is to be disabused of the notion that this is a Stiller/Murphy buddy picture. Murphy plays Slide, who remains a fringe character until the 45-minute mark. He’s just some local loudmouth ex-con who shouts at neighbor Josh Kovacs (Stiller) whenever he walks by.

Later, after Josh is canned as the general manager of The Tower for standing up to top resident Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), he invites Slide to join his crew of bumbling burglars. He reminds Slide they used to be nursery-school classmates, which Josh seems to think means they have a relationship, despite having no true interaction for 40 years.

The lack of any real Murphy/Stiller pairing is the biggest disappointment about “Tower Heist.” Both actors have been stuck in a rut of middlebrow comedies lately, so the idea of a couple of aging but still potent funnymen tag-teaming has a great deal of appeal.

Alas, they’re reduced to a few lame, sniping exchanges: “That’s it! I don’t want to talk to you for the rest of the robbery!”

Director Brett Ratner and screenwriters Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson never really kick the action out of tame screwball comedy territory, despite the daring Occupy overtones.

It’s too bad, considering the killer cast they assembled: in addition to Stiller, Murphy and Alda, there’s Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick, Judd Hirsch, Michael Peña, Téa Leoni and Gabourey Sidibe. That’s five Academy Award nominees by my count – quite a lot of firepower considering the low-wattage material.

Affleck plays Josh’s dim brother-in-law; Peña is Dev’Reaux, the brash new elevator man; Sidibe is Odessa, a Jamaican maid with an outsize personality; Hirsch plays the unctuous Tower boss; and Leoni is the hard-wired FBI agent gunning for Shaw.

I particularly liked Broderick as Fitzhugh, a former Wall Street whiz turned unemployed evictee, who’s got an air of bottled-up middle-aged desperation just waiting to blow. Broderick has gray hair now, a couple of chins and a mid-life spread, but his boyish face still holds a hint of puckish Bueller charm.

Though held back by its sophomoric, self-imposed limitations, “Tower Heist” rises higher than it has any right to.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold"

"The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" is a documentary along the lines of director/co-writer/star Morgan Spurlock's breakout hit, "Super Size Me." It's a gimmick, but a pretty clever one.

Instead of gorging on McDonald's food and discovering that it makes you fat, Spurlock jumps headlong into the world of product placement in movies, television and so on. He doesn't do so in the most obvious way, by showing some of the most egregious examples and allowing us to laugh at the clumsy, naked crassness of it all (although there is a little of that, like the toadying employee offering his boss a Subway chicken teriyaki foot-long).

No, Spurlock -- whose filmmaking sensibilities run more to the arm-twisting of Michael Moore crossed with the look-at-me showmanship of a P.T. Barnum -- wants to illustrate the evils of marketing by loading his movie up with advertising messages and product placements.

The entire film is, in fact, about its own making. Spurlock goes around to advertising agencies and corporate headquarters to pitch them to sign on as a sponsor of the documentary he's shooting about product placement. For instance, he tells POM Wonderful (a pomegranate juice maker) that if they sign on as the signature sponsor for a cool million bucks, he'll never been seen drinking anything else in the movie. And he's true to his word.

(Thus, for technical and contractual reasons, the film's actual title is "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.")

Other sponsors, willing to risk Spurlock's reputation as a rabble-rouser -- albeit a smiling, apple-cheeked one -- come onboard. There are even actual 30-second commercials woven into the film starring Spurlock schlepping for companies like JetBlue, Old Navy and the Hyatt hotel chain.

In essence, he's selling out to find out what it's like to be a sellout.

There aren't really any profound truths or surprising insights to be found along this journey. By allowing the audience to tag along into the pitch meetings and listen in on the phone calls, we learn that most companies are fanatical about protecting their brand names, and that there are a whole lot of kooky and egotistical people involved in the marketing of these products.

But like "Super Size Me," it's an undeniably entertaining ride, with Spurlock as our engaging, impish host who brings a giddy enthusiasm to his merrymaking-slash-pranksterism.

The movie is less interesting in the (perhaps inevitable) sections where Spurlock questions himself and his project, and whether he's just becoming part of the problem he was trying to lampoon, and asks celebrities like Donald Trump to weigh in.

It's just an unnecessary downbeat to include things like professional scold Ralph Nader telling us how advertising is basically just professional-grade lying. But then, Spurlock punctures the sour mood by trying to hock a pair of shoes to Nader, who obliges.

Ultimately, the thing Spurlock sells best in "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" is himself.

3 stars out of four