This is a godawful film. The cast has plenty of star power but zero chemistry, and the script is flaming garbage - it's not just supremely unfunny, but the writers failed to establish integral plot points at the beginning, resulting in way too many deus ex machina situations at the end.
My main gripe is that the key to a good heist movie is a clever heist plan that's at least nominally possible IRL. Not Tower Heist! It wasn't as if the writers tried to come up with something and failed; they didn't even try, so the viewer has to pretend that: 1) If the Department of Justice received a communication from a federal judge requiring a court appearance in a huge case on Thanksgiving, a federal holiday where the entire government is closed, they wouldn't question it. (We're going to ignore the fact that federal marshals, not FBI agents, transport defendants under house arrest.) 2) You can dangle a solid gold car weighing at least a ton from a standard window washer's rig or dump it on top of an elevator without the cables snapping.
3) You can dangle a red Ferrari from the top of Trump Tower during the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade and nobody will notice, because there won't be any NYPD helicopters in the area.
4) If you knock out an FBI agent guarding a door, he won't call for backup when he comes to.
5) An elderly woman who comes across four hotel employees pushing a Ferrari down the hall isn't going to ask any questions; she'll just hand them her dog to walk.
If this were fun, I would give it a pass, but the entire movie is strangely joyless.
Half of the heist team isn't necessary, not just for the team, but to the movie itself. Matthew Broderick plays a random Wall Street guy who defaulted on his mortgage payments and lost his condo. He makes no contributions to the heist plan or the plot, and I guess we're supposed to care because he lost his shirt in the same market that enabled him to make his millions in the first place. What?
There's also a problematic racial undercurrent. A White dude wants to steal something but doesn't know how, so he turns to the one Black person he knows, because clearly that person must know how to steal. What? Eddie Murphy's lines sound like a suburban soccer mom's idea of how "urbans" talk. Gabourey Sidibe, equipped with a godawful Jamaican accent for no apparent reason, is the safecracker. Apparently it was on her CV that her father was a locksmith, and Ben Stiller remembered that because he cares so much about his staff (🙄), so of course she knows how to open safes. One of the first things we find out about her is she's about to be deported because her visa has expired, so sure, she'll want to commit a crime that will guarantee her deportation if she gets caught. What? Just a dumpster fire all the way around.
My main gripe is that the key to a good heist movie is a clever heist plan that's at least nominally possible IRL. Not Tower Heist! It wasn't as if the writers tried to come up with something and failed; they didn't even try, so the viewer has to pretend that: 1) If the Department of Justice received a communication from a federal judge requiring a court appearance in a huge case on Thanksgiving, a federal holiday where the entire government is closed, they wouldn't question it. (We're going to ignore the fact that federal marshals, not FBI agents, transport defendants under house arrest.) 2) You can dangle a solid gold car weighing at least a ton from a standard window washer's rig or dump it on top of an elevator without the cables snapping.
3) You can dangle a red Ferrari from the top of Trump Tower during the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade and nobody will notice, because there won't be any NYPD helicopters in the area.
4) If you knock out an FBI agent guarding a door, he won't call for backup when he comes to.
5) An elderly woman who comes across four hotel employees pushing a Ferrari down the hall isn't going to ask any questions; she'll just hand them her dog to walk.
If this were fun, I would give it a pass, but the entire movie is strangely joyless.
Half of the heist team isn't necessary, not just for the team, but to the movie itself. Matthew Broderick plays a random Wall Street guy who defaulted on his mortgage payments and lost his condo. He makes no contributions to the heist plan or the plot, and I guess we're supposed to care because he lost his shirt in the same market that enabled him to make his millions in the first place. What?
There's also a problematic racial undercurrent. A White dude wants to steal something but doesn't know how, so he turns to the one Black person he knows, because clearly that person must know how to steal. What? Eddie Murphy's lines sound like a suburban soccer mom's idea of how "urbans" talk. Gabourey Sidibe, equipped with a godawful Jamaican accent for no apparent reason, is the safecracker. Apparently it was on her CV that her father was a locksmith, and Ben Stiller remembered that because he cares so much about his staff (🙄), so of course she knows how to open safes. One of the first things we find out about her is she's about to be deported because her visa has expired, so sure, she'll want to commit a crime that will guarantee her deportation if she gets caught. What? Just a dumpster fire all the way around.