Tower Heist - 2 1/2 smiles

“Tower Heist” is one of the biggest feel-good comedies of the year. Yes, it has a lot of plot holes and yes, there’s a lot of silliness. But you’re going to want to cheer for our heroes, the average working folks who hope to steal their own money back from a Madoff-type billionaire. Josh Kovacs (Stiller), the general manager of the Tower, a posh apartment complex, oversees a motley staff that includes his flakey brother-in-law Charlie (Casey Afflick); a Jamaican-born maid named Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) and new-hire Enrique (Michael Pena). Josh is proud of the way they cater to every whim of their elite clientele, the richest of whom is the penthouse dweller Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda). Then the FBI arrests Shaw for fraud and the staff pensions Josh invested with him disappear. Josh’s solution: with the help of a small-time thief named Slide (Murphy), they’ll break into Shaw’s hidden safe and recover the money he has stolen. Of course, things don’t go as smoothly as planned.

The script seems patched together from any number of heist movies, including Ocean’s Eleven and the pacing is uneven. Nonetheless, there’s something enjoyable about a robbery plan where the thieves are motivated by outrage rather than by greed. And the movie benefits from some terrific performances, especially Eddie Murphy, who got laughs as Donkey in the Shrek series, but squandered his movie capital on one crummy film after another. He’s in top form here as a street criminal who lends his expertise to the caper. Matthew Broderick, as a down-on-his-luck executive who’s now squatting in his former Tower apartment, is perfect as a defeated milquetoast, and Pena steals every scene he’s in as the group’s dumb bunny. Alan Alda is good as the silver-tongued bad guy. With Occupy Wall Street still going on, “Tower Heist” is populist fluff…make that entertaining populist fluff. 11/4/11