Tower heist thanksgiving movie#
Tower heist thanksgiving series#

Naturally, none of these people have any criminal expertise, so it's decided to bring in a real felon, a fast-talking con called Slide (Murphy) as a consultant. ('I went to Yale 20 years ago,' he says glumly.

Also onboard for the caper is another tower resident, the down-on-his-luck Wall Street drone Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), whose company has gone belly up and who is overstaying eviction from his swell digs. Straitlaced Charlie (Casey Affleck) is the concierge, bumbling Enrique (Michael Peña) is the bellhop, and randy Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) is a room maid (and, fortuitously, a locksmith's daughter as well). Josh's ad-hoc heist team is of course intimately familiar with the hotel's layout and personnel routines. So when it looks as if Shaw might beat his rap-and when Agent Denham suggests that he could have millions in stolen funds socked away in his apartment-Josh and his now-impoverished staffers decide to break into the place and steal the money back. (He's at pains to point out that the car once belonged to Steve McQueen.) When an FBI team led by Special Agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni) suddenly arrives at the hotel to bust Shaw for fraud, Kovacs and his staff discover that their company pension account, which had been under Shaw's supervision, is now entirely empty, and they've been left penniless. Foremost among this coddled crowd is Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a Wall Street investment titan so loaded he keeps a vintage Ferrari on display in his living room. Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the manager of a Manhattan luxury hotel with a tower wing of deluxe apartments inhabited by wealthy permanent residents.

Tower heist thanksgiving movie#

The plot arises out of our current economic disarray, but the movie wisely avoids message-mongering. It's a buddies flick, with even the top-billed stars, Stiller and (more than you'd expect) Murphy, fitting themselves smoothly into the picture's smartly assembled ensemble.

Tower heist thanksgiving series#

films, or the Rush Hour series (which Ratner also directed). This is not really a buddy movie, either-not in the machine-tooled manner of the old 48 Hrs. But the laughs prevail, thanks to a cast that's sharp beyond the call of PG-13 entertainment. Oh, the titular heist (carried out during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade) is a shambolic affair, and some promising glimmers of romance never pay off, and the final plot development is a deflating miscalculation. A buddy comedy? With Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy? Directed by Brett Ratner? I can hear your eyeballs cartwheeling in your head.īut Tower Heist is that uncommon thing, a big-budget Hollywood holiday movie that really is funny.