Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is incredible at his job as building manager at the Tower.He knows every person in his building—right down to their drink preference—and is a step ahead of every potential crisis a multi-million dollar apartment complex in New York can present. His staff includes some characters, too. Charlie the concierge (Ben Affleck), the doorman Lester (Stephen McKinley Henderson), newly hired bellhop Enrique (Michael Pena), and poorly accented Jamaican maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe).
Alan Alda plays Arthur Shaw, a billionaire who lives in the Tower, and his take on the Madoff-like character is spot-on. Shaw is being investigated for securities fraud, and has taken Kovacs’ pension (along with everyone else’s) and “invested” it for a big return—except there’s no return. Shaw’s lost everything, and in the process, made off with a healthy sum for himself.
Kovacs, Charlie, Mr. Fitzhugh (played dryly by a graying Matthew Broderick) enlist the help of loud-talking, fast-cracking Slide (Eddie Murphy) to break into the Tower, steal a secret nest egg that Shaw’s hidden somewhere in his penthouse apartment, and repay everyone who’s lost money. If ever there was a more ill-equipped group to pull off a heist, this is it.
The title immediately suggests that there’s going to be something heisted from a tower, but boy, does it take the movie a while to get to it. It’s a serviceable comedy, but as with most comedies these days, one is lead to believe it’s going to be a lot funnier from the trailer. Also, there are questions the movie sets up that it never answers; at one point, Slide locks a person in the closet of an apartment that’s being renovated, and blasts a radio so no one can hear him. Later, a significant part of the heist (without giving anything away, involving a car that should be way heavier than the movie lets on) happens in that apartment—but there’s no radio blaring and no guy. Near the end of the movie, the closet is shown again (a good two to three hours after the “heist” is over) and the same song is blaring on the radio.
Granted, during these kinds of movies, the audience is supposed to suspend a bit of disbelief; but there are some pretty big things this movie is asking the audience to overlook.
That said, it was enjoyable—as a rental.
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