Well I had my seat in the cinema. All I would have needed was my pillow and quilt cover and I could have had a nice nap for an hour and three quarters. Such as was how unbearably boring and awful this movie was I wish I had bought them with me. Tower Heist is one of those "all the best bits are in the trailer" films, which is what propelled me and my father to go and see it.
One other attraction with Tower Heist is it's confluence of top stars such as Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck and Tea Leoni. But a star studded A-list cast doesn't necessarily mean a fantastic film as I found out to my disappointment. This film tries to be like Ocean's Eleven (as others have already reiterated). Funny, clever and slick. Tower Heist falls desperately short on all these fronts. It's not funny (where's the comedy!?) dumb and boring. There's nothing wrong with the story. Rich millionaire embezzles his employees money that they invested in him for their pension, so they decide to get their own back by stealing the money he owes them. The thing is it just isn't involving or fun in any shape or form. Stiller at least gives a decent enough performance along with Affleck and Leoni, but with such a poorly convoluted script that is thinner than the edge of a piece of paper, there's little they can do. The film starts off far too slow in getting to the core of the story (which at this point I was prepared to ignore because I thought it was a build up to an entertaining and clever heist), but instead found myself just constantly looking at my watch. The narrative was straightforward, predictable and plodding. Nothing remarkable happens during the heist, though I did admire how they got the gold bullion car out of the hotel (even though it is impossible, you couldn't do that in real life). I did also chuckle at a few moments I will admit, hence my two star rating, not one. But I was unamused for the most part.
One of the other biggest grievances I had for this is putting Eddie Murphy in this film, who still plays the same boring, repetitive, loud mouth role he has for the last twenty years. The last thing I found him funny in was Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps, which was about ten years ago. Since then and in Tower Heist, he is not funny and is loud, but just annoying and tries desperately too hard and has the propensity to horrifically over-act. It's about time he retired from acting I think. Realising when I read the name Brett Ratner as director who also did X Men: The Last Stand (which was awful) I shouldn't be surprised this was rubbish. Trust me Ocean's Eleven this film isn't. I wouldn't even class this as an "action-comedy" as it had little of either. A wasted opportunity that was bungled due to a predictable and unimaginative narrative and poor script that lacked anything resembling a laugh. This is one caper film whose characters I didn't find funny or care about. Skip this and just re-watch Ocean's Eleven instead, it's ten times better.
One other attraction with Tower Heist is it's confluence of top stars such as Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck and Tea Leoni. But a star studded A-list cast doesn't necessarily mean a fantastic film as I found out to my disappointment. This film tries to be like Ocean's Eleven (as others have already reiterated). Funny, clever and slick. Tower Heist falls desperately short on all these fronts. It's not funny (where's the comedy!?) dumb and boring. There's nothing wrong with the story. Rich millionaire embezzles his employees money that they invested in him for their pension, so they decide to get their own back by stealing the money he owes them. The thing is it just isn't involving or fun in any shape or form. Stiller at least gives a decent enough performance along with Affleck and Leoni, but with such a poorly convoluted script that is thinner than the edge of a piece of paper, there's little they can do. The film starts off far too slow in getting to the core of the story (which at this point I was prepared to ignore because I thought it was a build up to an entertaining and clever heist), but instead found myself just constantly looking at my watch. The narrative was straightforward, predictable and plodding. Nothing remarkable happens during the heist, though I did admire how they got the gold bullion car out of the hotel (even though it is impossible, you couldn't do that in real life). I did also chuckle at a few moments I will admit, hence my two star rating, not one. But I was unamused for the most part.
One of the other biggest grievances I had for this is putting Eddie Murphy in this film, who still plays the same boring, repetitive, loud mouth role he has for the last twenty years. The last thing I found him funny in was Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps, which was about ten years ago. Since then and in Tower Heist, he is not funny and is loud, but just annoying and tries desperately too hard and has the propensity to horrifically over-act. It's about time he retired from acting I think. Realising when I read the name Brett Ratner as director who also did X Men: The Last Stand (which was awful) I shouldn't be surprised this was rubbish. Trust me Ocean's Eleven this film isn't. I wouldn't even class this as an "action-comedy" as it had little of either. A wasted opportunity that was bungled due to a predictable and unimaginative narrative and poor script that lacked anything resembling a laugh. This is one caper film whose characters I didn't find funny or care about. Skip this and just re-watch Ocean's Eleven instead, it's ten times better.