Thoughts on "Tower Heist" (2011)

Brett Ratner's fortunately topical "Tower Heist" is, for its majority, a semi-flat, moderately engaging heist comedy that nevertheless never really takes off. That is, until Eddie Murphy shows up. 
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The highly-skilled, highly-missed comedic actor, who disappeared into a vat of atrocious, doughy children's films for the last decade including "I Spy", "Daddy Day Care" and the abominable fat-suit comedy "Norbit", has returned to nearly peak form here as the petty criminal Slide, whom Ben Stiller enlists as the mind behind the crime due to his apparent experience in the matter. 
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Of course the film quite amazingly mirrors the current events at Wall Street and cities around the world, where protesters line the streets damning the corporate greed and imbalance of power which so permeates the country. 
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"Tower Heist," which gives a face to this ruthless greed in Alan Alda's Arthur Shaw (who among other crimes, has essentially stolen all of his employees' life savings) is very much the 1%, his scheming, revenge-minded tower-servants, the other 99. 
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Contrary to Andrew Niccols' sloppy, half-baked "In Time," which uses the current social unrest and lopsided power balance to allegorical effect, "Tower Heist" makes no mistake, bringing its power-to-the-people agenda to the forefront, the here and now.
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It's true that the film likely works better as a slice of our times wish-fulfillment rather than a comedy, yet in a film that's full of performances either disappointing or merely adequate, Murphy's presence is a giddy sight for sore eyes that considerably elevates the proceedings. [B-]