Delayed Reaction: Tower Heist

The Pitch: A movie about the struggle of the 99% and if you need it to be any more obvious, it'll be in a tower where the 1% lives at the top.

How I Came Into It: This is Ben Stiller's Mystery Men formula applied to Ocean's Eleven, which sounded very sloppy when I heard about it. I make no effort hiding my disdain for the evil businessman presentation in movies. At this point especially, it is very lazy and it tends to ignore the motivations of these characters and makes for very binary villains. It's what makes someone like a Jack Donaghey a revelation (You know, shading). Needless to say, I was not excited to watch this.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) If you put Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, and Michael Pena in enough scenes together, you're eventually going to get something good. There's simply too much talent there, and in the case of the latter names (Pena, Affleck), underutilized talent. The movie is surprisingly subtle for a while with Alda's presentation as the villain. There were a few points when I even began to wonder if he'd been framed. Ultimately, he was a snake and by the time they removed all doubt, it was a satisfying confirmation.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I kind of hate when a movie expects me to be realistically invested in one thing (the staff losing their life savings to a greedy huckster) and suspend my disbelief in another (like they'd actually be able to keep all that stolen gold). What makes a good heist, comedy or otherwise, is that the core of the plan is clever or well-executed. This is sloppy and not nearly as fun to watch. It's a great example of what's wrong with the PG-13 rating: trying too hard to find a happy medium between adult and juvenile).

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend