I know you were all hoping for Immortals, but I've got to leave something to be desired don't I?
This week's movie is Tower Heist starring Eddie Murphy, Alan Alda and Ben Stiller. Sadly this movie fell short of my expectations; it was even a towering let down. Overall, I'll rate this movie at 2/5. While the story was interesting, but the movie forced the actors into roles that don't fit.
The story is, well, Robin Hood. Alda plays a crooked investor that stole all his clients money, including the pensions of the employees at the Tower in downtown NYC. Stiller is the Manager of the Tower who invested all the employee's pensions with Alda because he promised he could double their investment. After finding out that the pensions are gone, Stiller decides to steal the safety net that all crooked businessmen keep in order to save the Tower Employees' retirement. Stiller hires Murphy who, along with the new Elevator Mechanic, the maid and a down and out stock broker, plan and execute a burglary of Alda's penthouse sweet and steal back the money he took.
Simple, pure and relatively straightforward. There are only two major twists: the items they steal back are all components of a racecar made of pure gold; and Stiller ends up in prison at the end.
Now to the cast. Individually and in other shows I enjoy every other actor. Eddie Murphy is a movie Icon from his star performance in the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy to his more well known role as the Donkey from the Shrek series. He is a comedy idol, who, sadly didn't pull off a very impressive performance. Somewhere along the line, swearing stops being a comical effect and becomes an annoyance. Frankly, Murphy crossed that line. While he did do some funny things and drops some funny lines, he ultimately failed in bringing his usual effect to the table. Stiller, to me, performed as expected. I did like him in Night at the Museum but I feel that was the exception rather than the rule. Stiller was dry, I couldn't make out when he was joking or when he was being serious, and his reactions were completely staged. Alan Alda used to be one of the funniest TV actors. The TV show Mash is one of my all time favorites. Yet, again Alda falls short. He doesn't seem to like his role, almost as if he's having to force himself to not break character.
As usual, here is the link to the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I agree with most of the rotten reviews, sadly. While there were some laughs in this film, there were definitely not enough to make up for the clashing personalities. Top review of the week: Jack K Kooper's comment that Eddie Murphy is back in fine form. It hurts to say this, but I could live without seeing another movie starring Murphy if this his his 'fine form.' Thanks but I'll stick to Beverly Hills Cop when he truely was in fine form.
One final thought, if your a fan of shows like The Office you may enjoy this movie, but since I don't, anyone like me will likely not enjoy this film.
I am a big fan of 1980's Eddie Murphy, so I was hoping this movie would be better.
ReplyDeleteSince the 1980's Eddie Murphy has not been in a good movie. The early 90's were filled with terrible comedies, and since the late 90's Murphy has made nothing but awful kids movies.
I was hoping this would be a return to form of Eddie from the 80s, specifically from his stand up days (when he was the funniest in my opinion). His stand up was pretty raunchy, so I don't have any issue with the swearing. However, I think the real issue is how hard they are pushing the swearing.
What I think happened is that they tried to distance Murphy from his kids movies as much as possible. The easiest way to do this is of course to add an extreme amount of swearing and sexual innuendo. I have no issue with swearing or innuendo, but it cannot be the only element of your comedy. Unless you are in Jr. High, swear words and innuendo aren't funny by themselves. Since the comedy in Tower Heist lacks depth it quickly becomes just swear words.
Overall, Tower Heist didn't provide the Eddie Murphy revitalization that I was hoping for. On a Murphy humor scale I would say this film is roughly equal to his attempts at non kids movies from 95-now. It's not a classic Eddie film by any means, but at least it isn't another Norbit or Nutty Professor.