The Student News Site of Shawnee Mission Northwest

SMNW

The Student News Site of Shawnee Mission Northwest

SMNW

The Student News Site of Shawnee Mission Northwest

SMNW

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Review: Tower Heist

Tower Heist
Running time: 104 minutes
Stars: 3.5 out of 5

Laden with a cast of aging actors, Brett Ratner’s new movie Tower Heist could have been a boring film with a thin plot and lame jokes. Fortunately this movie proved me wrong. The movie opens up with tower manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) playing chess, getting groceries and opening car doors for the rich Wall Street banker and Tower owner Arthur Shaw (Allan Alda). The movie quickly introduces many of the main characters who are all co-workers with Kovacs.

The plot quickly unfolds as Shaw is caught in a security fraud scandal, as all his assets are frozen. All the workers lose their pensions and start realizing that Shaw has stolen from all of them. Kovacs then works up a hair-brained scheme to rob a safe located in Shaw’s penthouse with at least 20 million dollars in cash stored inside it. Kovacs and his friends are inexperienced with crime, so they look to a regular thief named Slide (Eddie Murphy) to teach them the ways of a criminal.

The acting is what truly makes this movie worth seeing, as it was brilliantly casted. Stiller’s portrayal of a regular likable guy reminded me a lot of his character Greg from the Meet the Parents movies.

Slide was possibly the best role Murphy’s played since his movies of the ’90s. I was pleased to see Murphy take a much-needed break from starring in a string of lackluster children’s movies.

Murphy and Stiller were great, but the best character was Chase Fitzhugh, played by Matthew Broderick. Broderick’s acting was the best in the movie in his portrayal of a wimpy, penniless ex-Wall Street banker. Every line out of his mouth had me laughing hysterically.

Overall, the movie was silly and filled with plot holes and a lot of very unrealistic scenes, such as fitting a Ferrari in an elevator shaft. Also, the continuity was frequently off, as it failed to explain how certain things occurred. All complaints aside, the intent of the movie is to keep the audience laughing, which is exactly what it did.

The dialogue was clever, and surprisingly not too raunchy. The actors seemed to go great together, and none of them seemed too old despite Broderick and Stiller having grey hair now. Overlooking a few minor plot miscues, Tower Heist was a hysterically funny movie that will keep the viewers laughing throughout. I was pleasantly surprised.

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Review: Tower Heist