For better or worse, Ben Stiller has teamed up with Brett Ratner to make the long gestating comedy, “Tower Heist.”
First reported way back in February, the film which has been knocking around Hollywood for a few years now and was originally conceived as an African-American ensemble comedy, has been reworked into a working-stiffs-from-New-Yawk tale that will star Ben Stiller “as the overworked manager of a luxury building who, along with other staff, lost their pensions to a Bernie Madoff-like Wall Street crook. It so happens that the fraudster is being held under house arrest in the luxury penthouse apartment upstairs, and the manager and four cohorts figure a heist will make them whole.”
The film has a script that was written by Ted Griffin (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “Matchstick Men”), reworked by longtime Brett Ratner collaborator Jeff Nathanson (“Rush Hour 2,” “Rush Hour 3”) with Noah Baumbach lending his contributions specifically to Stiller’s character.
Ratner, who wastes no time in reminding anyone who will listen that Griffin originally wrote “Ocean’s Eleven” for him to direct says, “The major difference from the Ocean’s film is those guys were expert thieves. These are real guys whose talent is they know the inner workings of the building and the people in it. It took a long time for this to come together, but it was totally worth the wait. This has a lot of heart to go along with the humor.”
We’re really of two minds about this film. On the one hand, Brett Ratner is one of the most non-distinctive directors working in Hollywood right now. His films have largely been faceless popcorn munchers with nothing to distinguish them except for their extreme mediocrity. On the the other hand, the writing talent behind the film could potentially hold some promise (and yes, that includes Nathanson who aside from writing the execrable “Rush Hour” sequels also wrote “Catch Me If You Can”) so perhaps this will be the rare case of a director rising to the material or the material making a director look better than he is.
In any event we’ll probably find out next year. Filming will begin in New York in November. [Deadline]
