6/5/2023 0 Comments Movie stiller and eddie murry![]() ![]() Sure, there are some dead ends and some switchbacks, but if you follow our route, you will see that there was a direct line from Murphy to Stiller the whole time, it just took a while to get there.ĪDDENDUM: The list only includes male buddy comedies (sorry, Outrageous Fortune!) because once you go intergender, it becomes a romantic comedy, which is a whole different route. If you start at Murphy and, applying the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon rules, leap from buddy-movie co-star to co-star, project to project, you will eventually end up at Stiller and have hit nearly everybody. And yet, in tearing IMDb apart, we made a discovery: The reason why this pairing feels so familiar is because Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller are the two ends of a road map that leads through nearly every buddy-movie alumnus of the past 50 years, from Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau to Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. We searched our buddy movie database top to bottom for reassurance that this was in fact a reunion, but no. There are a finite number of big comedy stars in the world and therefore a finite number of buddy-movie combinations looking at these two it seemed inconceivable that this could be their first pairing and yet we could remember no other joint project. When we first saw the poster for Tower Heist (which opens tomorrow), with its buddy-movie touting of STILLER and MURPHY at the top, the whole thing simultaneously felt very familiar and very disorienting. Hosting the Academy Awards this coming February just might be what he needs to prove Tower Heist wasn't a fluke.Photo: Photo-Illustration: Mary-Louise Price Photos: iStockphoto, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. While this might signal a comeback for Murphy, until he can stand front and center as the leading man he once was it will remain difficult to forgive him for the last 15 years ( Meet Dave, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, I Spy). What's left is an amusing team of misfits bumbling around aimlessly in search of a disappointing payoff more ridiculous than naming a humanitarian award after Bernie Madoff. While the setup works well enough, the heist itself isn't executed on the page with much imagination. With every cog in place, you'd think this comedy machine, despite being directed by industry tool Brett Ratner ( Rush Hour 3), would run smoothly. ![]() Also joining in is actor Matthew Broderick ( Election) as a former Wall Street investor who goes bankrupt because of Shaw's shady business ethics. With little experience in thievery, the team - which includes Stiller, Affleck, Michael Peña ( The Lincoln Lawyer), and Gabourey Sidibe ( Precious) - recruits "Slide" Dalphael (Murphy), a common criminal with the know-how to exact revenge. In the film, a group of hotel employees plot to take back the money they lost in a Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a Wall Street billionaire and tenant in the highrise. In fact, the diverse makeup of characters and personalities is what makes the movie so casually fun, at least for the first half of the heist. Still, the ride has its moments with a solid cast who could easily make an impact off the bench in lieu of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, or Matt Damon. Honestly, this is a Ben Stiller movie and Murphy is just coming along for the ride. And while it's true that Murphy provides his best comedy outing since 1996's remake of The Nutty Professor (I still don't understand the love for Bowfinger), he's not given as much screen time as you'd think for someone who's billed so high. When that overly ambitious idea fell through, Tower Heist became a poor man's version of Ocean's 11 - even enlisting Ocean's screenwriter Ted Griffin and Ocean's supporting actor Casey Affleck. If you believe the hype, however, Murphy's return to glory comes in full force with Tower Heist, a comedy crime caper the seeds of which date back to 2005 when Murphy was imagined teaming up with a host of other black comedians including Chris Tucker, Dave Chappelle, and Martin Lawrence. Nowadays, you'd probably have better luck being entertained by his older brother Charlie. Wherever you were in the '80s, chances are you were laughing at something Murphy was doing on screen or stage. Roger's Neighborhood during his Saturday Night Live days if it would help me forget Norbit. I'm talking about Murphy debating boxing greats in Coming to America or hustling his way into a swanky suite in Beverly Hills Cop. Stiller, Broderick, Peña, Affleck, and Murphy getting ready to occupy Wall Street.Ĭan anyone remember the last time comedian Eddie Murphy was actually funny? No, voicing an animated donkey with a hankering for waffles doesn't count. ![]()
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