Johnny Case in Wonderland . . . hopelessly adrift in popular culture

I have no problem suspending my disbelief when I go to the movie theatre.  I suspend it in the parking lot.  I suspend it the day before.  Sometimes, when I read about a movie that sounds good to me going into production, I’ll suspend it from that point on.  Time travel, super heroes, dead baseball players emerging from corn fields, Justin Timberlake as a viable romantic lead, Ryan Gosling as a tough guy, transforming toy robots invading earth, kid wizards, vampires, Cameron Diaz in just about any role—whatever, I’m in.  It’s part of the magic of the movies.  But sometimes a movie tries to take advantage of my willingness to play along, and when that happens I get angry about it.  Tower Heist is exactly that kind of movie. 

I likely would’ve let Tower Heist come to my TV, but it received surprisingly decent reviews and was seen, along with his signing on to host the Oscars (he’s since bowed out), as the opening salvo of Eddie Murphy’s career rehabilitation (which has since gone off the rails, though HBO and Spike Lee may yet save it).  I have a soft spot for Eddie Murphy, but then so too do most middle aged men who came of age during his brilliant short run on S.N.L. and subsequent stratospheric rise to movie stardom.  What the hell, I thought, I’ll give it a go, even if it was directed by the odious Brett Ratner.  I came out of the movie livid.  Not because it was poorly made, per se, and not because it didn’t have a few pleasant moments—Alan Alda, for example, as the Bernie Madoff inspired Arthur Shaw is quite good, as is Michael Peña, who is fast becoming one of my favorite scene stealing character actors.  No, I’m mad because the movie treated me with utter disdain, asking me to suspend my disbelief in ways that no sane person could.

What you’re asking me to believe does not have to be believable so long as you ask me in such a way that doesn’t assume I’m an idiot.  For example, if Owen Wilson goes back to the Paris of the 20s for no explicable reason but you play it straight, I’ll totally buy it.  But you can not hinge the entire plot of a heist movie on something so stupid that if I don’t believe it then the whole movie falls apart.  But that’s exactly what Tower Heist does.  Three times.  The first instance centers around a hidden wall safe in Shaw’s apartment.  We are asked to believe that when the F.B.I., as elite a group of crime-fighters as there is in the world, arrested him and then searched for his hidden assets that they somehow missed his wall safe, even if it is actually encased in the wall.  For the sake of argument, let’s pretend this is acceptable storytelling.  Even though it’s not.  But the next major plot turn hinges on the bumbling thieves who are trying to rob the aforementioned wall safe accidentally discovering the secret ledger that details Shaw’s financial malfeasance.  They find it tucked into the owner’s manual in the glove compartment of a car that’s parked in his living room.  So the audience is asked to believe that in searching Shaw’s apartment for records of his assets that the F.B.I., S.E.C., and whatever other alphabet soup agency that would be involved in the investigation somehow didn’t look in the glove box of a car that’s the centerpiece of his living room.  Seriously.  And then there’s the little matter of hiding a car in a swimming pool at a penthouse apartment that would’ve been an asset immediately ceased by the government and believing that the thieves would be able to just come and go in said apartment as they please and then … and then … oh, to hell with it, you get the point. 

I can’t remember the last time I saw such a lazy film that is so guilty of being so utterly contemptuous of its audience.  I was livid, but I suppose I don’t really know why.  It’s not like I believe the suits who decide to green-light most movies have any interest in not treating their audience like total morons.  Is it any wonder movie attendance is in decline?  In any case, it took several episodes of Mad Men to wash the bad taste out of my mouth, but I’m better now.