Kitty's Corner

Movie review

The Tower Apartment building manager Josh Kovacs (played convincingly by Ben Stiller) loves his demanding job of catering to the building's exclusive clientele. Arthur Shaw (played by Alan Alda), the ultra-wealthy penthouse resident, is exposed as a fraud and placed under house arrest by the FBI. Unfortunately he is also the Tower staffs' pension investor, and of course has embezzled the pension funds. Josh determines to get even and steal the pension money back.



Devising a plan to take back $20 million from the extortionate businessman, he assembles a team of Tower employees including concierge Charlie (Casey Affleck), elevator operator Enrique (Michael Pena), and maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), plus easygoing resident, former finance wizard Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), to attempt his outlandish scheme. Since none of them are familiar with how to cheat or steal, they team up with professional thief, Slide (Eddie Murphy).



This movie is packed with good actors. Eddie Murphy for one. It's ages since I saw Eddie Murphy in something, so I was thrilled to finally see him play a role again. It was even a role who could have lifted this movie up to hysterically funny heights. But he didn't deliver. I was so disappointed.

Another good actor is Matthew Broderick. He didn't deliver either. He just didn't bring his character to life - again: it could have been funny, but wasn't.

Then there's Alan Alda. He's usually a pretty good and convincing actor. Well... he didn't play his best in this role, in my opinion.

Ben Stiller played very well, and so did Gabourey Sidibe, the hugely overweight maid. They were really good, and not only added something really cool to their characters, but kinda carried the movie, too.

The storyline is basically how the good guys try to recover the money from the bad guy, meanwhile outwitting the FBI, who have bad guy Arthur Shaw under house arrest in his penthouse apartment.



Don't get me wrong. This isn't a hugely boring movie, or bad. It's an action comedy, just not a very convincing one - and while it does have some quite cool action scenes and funny moments, it's not at all as funny as it could have been. A real wasted opportunity, and a total waste of Eddie Murphy, in my opinion.

out of 6.