Universal Pictures
104 min., dir. by Brett Ratner with Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, and Casey Affleck

Bernie Madoff’s greed affected so many people. If all the victims of his ponzi scheme formed a torch and pitchfork wielding posse, their formation would be visible from space. The whole situation was devoid of humor, but Tower Heist tries to bring some laughs to a small percentage of people affected by a Madoff-type scheme, and has some decent things to share in a wholly unrealistic situation.

Josh Kovacs is the building manager at The Tower, a luxury residency at Columbus Circle in New York City (the exterior and location is that of The Trump International Tower in Columbus Circle). He is revered by his employees and the residents, and is a close confidant of the buildings owner, billionaire Arthur Shaw. When Shaw is arrested by the FBI, Kovacs needs to break the news to The Tower employees that he had asked Shaw to invest their pension fund, money that is now lost. As tensions begin to grow, Kovacs lashes out at the now cold and un-empathetic Shaw who is under house arrest in his penthouse loft.

Unhappy with Josh’s new attitude (and his destructive behavior), Shaw fires Josh and the few employees unlucky enough to be in the room when Kovacs loses his cool. In a bid to make up for his mistakes and help his friends, Josh hatches a plan to steal what he believes is $20 million Shaw has in a hidden safe in his penthouse. Employing the aid of a local crook to train his team of ex-employees and former residents, Kovacs begins his mission to set things straight and nothing will stop him, not even the lead FBI agent on the Shaw case that he is falling for.

Any heist story that features the ragtag upstart crew is generally unbelievable. The situations in Tower Heist are not just unbelievable — they’re down right unfathomable. With a ridiculousness factor of 1000 percent, it’s no use complaining.

At its start, the comedy was failing quickly. A pile of dialogue-driven nonsequiturs poorly delivering character back-story rained a felling of dread upon me. As the story picked up, the jokes got better, but drawn out sections of forced buffoonery hold the film back. There’s a good five to 10 minutes spent watching the protagonists shoplift petty items as a test set forth to them by their lowlife trainer, Slide, yet only one fleeting scene is used to cover their supposed training. While I try to look past these inconsistencies — as I do the ridiculous nature of the film — I can’t help but come back to them as they create a choppy viewing experience that pulls me away from enjoying it.

The saving grace of Tower Heist is its star-studded cast, and each role is played aptly by its chosen actor. It’s difficult to remember Eddie Murphy ever playing a character as despicable as Slide, and Matthew Broderick brought new tricks to the wounded deer act he perfected in Election. Alan Alda used to be a customer of mine when I worked retail and may be the nicest man alive. Seeing him jump into the heartless skin of Arthur Shaw takes all that away and sucks me into his world of greed and moral depravity.

But standing above them all is Ben Stiller and his New York accent. A native New Yorker, Stiller’s New York accent only really comes out in overly colorful skits and characters that lay the speech on thick. Here the accent is prominent and noticeable, but layered in so subtly that it feels natural. It’s a small idiosyncrasy that grounds a real enough character in an unreal story.

Tower Heist delivers some enjoyable laughs. Yet for as good a job the cast does to help the film, it still falls into a pit of convoluted exposition, tired chess analogies, and unrealistic events. The underlining exploration of one criminal turning a “nice guy” into the Robin Hood of his times is lost in the attempt to make the audience laugh. Good for a chuckle here and there, Tower Heist is just too long and too disjointed for a relaxing escape to the movies.

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Matthew Schuchman is the founder and film critic of Movie Reviews From Gene Shalit’s Moustache(http://shalitsstache.com). Also the contributing film writer for IPaintMyMind (http://ipaintmymind.org) he has no issue tearing apart and analyzing any film, even children’s movies.