Couldn’t wait to see TOWER HEIST. How much you like it will depend on how much you can’t wait to see Eddie Murphy back on the big screen, and how much disbelief you are willing to suspend. My suspenders snapped. Eddie almost saved me.

TOWER HEIST is built on a premise ripe for the times. Ben Stiller plays the general manager of the fanciest shmanciest condo complex in New York City. It seems he and his fellow employees– from the doorman to the chief exec– have all been cheated out of their life savings by the billionaire living in the penthouse, a Wall Street swindler played by the nastiest Alan Alda ever seen on celluloid. Clever casting, because who’d a thunk such a nice guy…well you get the picture. He’s the big cheese, and he gets stinkier by the frame; it looks like he’s going to get away with his crimes– plus a hidden cache of money, and a sneer.

So what are these hardworking stiffs  to do? Why, stage a robbery-Robin Hood style, of course.  Though a bit far-fetched, I bought it; little did I know there’d be much “farther fetching” to do. Things begin to fall apart as Stiller assembles his clueless crew: Casey Affleck as the well-meaning but idiot concierge; Michael Pena as a hip hop sometime D.J. and maintenance man who messes up and buys ski hats instead of ski masks to cover their faces for the “job”;  Matthew Broderick hilarious as a middle-aged yale grad and numbers geek recently evicted from the building and his job; and finally, petty street criminal played by Eddie Murphy, whom Stiller chooses because he seems to have stolen stuff before. It turns out it was only stuff like satellite dishes. So how’s he supposed to crack open one of the most complex safes on the planet? Enter Gabourey Sidibe as a Jamaican housekeeper— and expert locksmith!

Murphy is still funny and charismatic– that familiar toothy grin splitting his face apart so that you just LOVE him. And he seems to have improvised the few bits that work –his rant about remembering Stiller as the asthmatic kid in preschool no one wanted to play with.  And there’s a priceless crack about Bank of America. But the humor that’s supposed to come from his training this group of misfits,  like testing their stamina by making them shoplift (a feeble bit that falls flat) or lining them up on a rooftop with no coats on, and passing out bobby pins so they can practice picking locks– is absurd, not funny. How will bobby pins figure in a plan to crack a high tech safe in a sophisticated ultra secure complex that’s under deep surveillance by the FBI? That’s just lazy writing, obviously designed  give Murphy something funny to do.

The labored plot puts most of the burden on the audience. What unfolds depends heavily on our believing that the FBI can be easily tricked with one phone call; that the building’s security staff is so distracted by girlie magazines and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that they leave their posts to see the big Snoopy balloon; and finally, that this team of bungling burglars improvises a stunt so dangerous, it would have required years of secret training by the Flying Wallendas.

By the time it’s all over, we’re left with the loose ends. Murphy character eventually just drops out of the picture. Bits go nowhere–Tea Leoni as an FBI agent has a drunken scene with Stiller that hints at a romantic interlude that never happens.  A resident’s little doggie is introduced at the movie’s frenetic climax, then nothing comes of it. I could go on, but I’m bewildered and tired.

Eddie Murphy has been off the screen in anything significant for a long time. In fact, my teenage daughter only knows him as the voice of DONKEY in SHREK. TOWER HEIST is not likely to change that. Too bad. I miss you Eddie. Steal a good script— and I’m there.