Tower Heist

Isn’t the universe amazing? The same week that Ruth Madoff swears to Morley Safer that her family knew nothing about Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion fraud, in the same season that Americans are camped out in protest of economic inequality, comes a movie about luxury-apartment-building staffers who plot to steal back the lost pensions they invested with a very Madoffy man. During the Macy’s parade. It’s conceivable that Mrs. Madoff and the Occupy Wall Street people are having planning meetings with Universal Pictures. But I’m a cosmos guy, so I’ll go with that.

“Tower Heist’’ is smoothly made and smart enough. It’s not going for too much, but I laughed a lot, despite knowing better, which was more or less any time Eddie Murphy says anything to Ben Stiller. Stiller puts on an ethnic New York voice to play the building manager of a busy, Trumpy Columbus Circle high-rise, who leads the charge to break into the apartment of a Wall Street billionaire (Alan Alda) under FBI house arrest for stealing millions from investors. Stiller, of course, knows nothing about breaking and entering but bails out the loudmouth, do-ragged crook (Murphy) he passes every day on his way into Manhattan from Queens and asks him to help him and his accomplices - Matthew Broderick, Michael Peña, and Casey Affleck - pull this off. The Thanksgivingness of things isn’t lost on Murphy, who’s back doing jive turkey. It’s really a sketch of his Buddy Love concoction from the “Nutty Professor’’ movies crossed with Murphy’s brother Charlie. Everything he says is tired, but confidence and gusto count for a lot in a movie like this, and that’s Murphy here: scene after scene of jive gusto.