Tower Heist: kind of funny, kind of racist, kind of good

Heist movies are always a joy to watch — especially when they involve a star-studded cast. Tower Heist is a joy to watch AND it has a star-studded cast. That said, it fulfills the minimum requirements for a staple comedy heist movie to prep us for the holiday season.

The movie’s “rich people suck” premise couldn’t be any more spot on with all this “occupy” malarky going on — and they make it FUN! Ben Stiller plays Josh, the general manager of a luxury apartment complex. When one of the uber-rich tenants, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) pulls a Ponzi scheme on the quirky staff of the complex, Josh solicits the help of seasoned criminal Slide (Eddie Murphy), a merry band of former co-workers and a former tenant (Casey Affleck, Gabourey Sidibe, Michael Pena, Gabourey Sidibe, and Matthew Broderick) to rob Arthur.

The movie provided everything that a Brett Ratner movie should provide: comedy, action, and a bit of racial profiling.

For the record, whether a movie is or not, I say every movie is racist…just because I can’t think of anything else. But if you dig deep enough, any movie could have an element of racism. It’s really easy! Some more than others!

For instance, in Tower Heist, the cast is diverse enough and all the players get their time to shine — but all the players have the opportunity to partake in some sort of racism. (i.e. Sidibe’s interesting Jamaican accent, Affleck’s character presumptuously speaking Chinese to a Korean woman)

But the racism is besides the point. It’s more of a unintentional commentary if anything — but Ratner likes to walk that fine line (just watch his Rush Hour movies).

The movie was expectedly entertaining and it’s nice to see Murphy go back to his Axel Foley-esque ways of comedy — even if it was just PG-13. But it was great to see him in a role like this again amongst an all-star cast that was equally enjoyable to watch (could have used more Pena). I had just as much fun watching them as they did acting as fumbling bank robbers.

Tower Heist opens in theaters today.