Tower Heist 

Ben Stiller stars as the frighteningly efficient manager of an upscale high-rise building in the heart of Manhattan. He’s single-mindedly focused on his job until he discovers that the Bernie Madoff-like resident (Alan Alda) of the building’s penthouse suite has looted its employees’ pensions. He then sets about stealing some of the money back with the help of milquetoast businessman Matthew Broderick, Jamaican maid/safecracker Gabourey Sidibe, and a smartass career criminal played by Murphy.

It would be a mistake to call Murphy’s performance a stretch, since he played so many hustlers early in his career, but the break from playing fathers and the morbidly obese invigorates him; he hasn’t been this lively since Dreamgirls. Tower Heist gets off to a poky, exposition-riddled start, burdened with having to introduce a sprawling ensemble cast and their one defining characteristic apiece. It picks up for good once Murphy enters the picture halfway through, and it benefits from some nice ensemble work, but no thought or care seems to have gone into the heist at the movie’s core: it’s a big, dumb, blunt instrument of a plan. In the end, Tower Heist isn’t a black Ocean’s Eleven or a bold leap forward for feature-film distribution, just a passable piece of commercial entertainment that falls closer to product than art.