Universal Pictures
109 min., dir. by Baltasar Kormakur with Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, and Giovanni Ribisi

In 2000, Giovanni Ribisi costarred in the big budget remake of Gone in 60 Seconds. In the film, he botched a job stealing cars, so the psychopath who hired him forces Ribisi’s character’s brother (a retired car thief) to run a job, or else they all die. Contraband is pretty much the same premise, minus the cars, plus convoluted twists, with Ribisi in the mad man role.

When his younger brother-in-law botches a job running drugs, retired smuggling legend Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) puts his security systems business on hold to come back to the game. The man who hired Farraday’s brother-in-law has made threats to his entire family, so Chris has to suit up to save the day. Refusing to smuggle drugs, Chris decides to transport a hearty pile of counterfeit bills to pay off the debt owed. Things are not made easy, though, as the mad man pulling the strings prefers to smuggle drugs, not money.

As a viewer, you can count on nearly every action film/crime thriller having some unbelievable holes in the story. At times they can be forgivable, but Contraband takes the premise to a new level: cutting large holes in heavily manned tankers without being noticed, especially when the captain and his security crew know you are a smuggler? Moving a tremendous stack of seemingly real currency from the highest point of the  ship to the lowest, where it is slowly placed into the large hole without anyone noticing? Every limit is tested in regards to the audience’s patients, as an already tight time frame of one hour to complete their acquisition of the fake money is extended by poor circumstances and a stop to rob an armored car. That one hour consists of action and travel that had to take at least three hours. It doesn’t matter your friends bought you more time by messing with the boat, it couldn’t happen.

There are many other nonsensical points in the movie, and at one point, I became enraged. Eventually, it is revealed that most smugglers simply pay a fee to the boat’s captain, who allows anyone to smuggle their wares for a price. At the same time, Chris says early on, “You have to spend money to make money,” referring to the purchasing of the fake bills to sell them off again. If this is the case, just spend the money to pay the captain off as well and make life easy on yourself. Chris has the stigma of being the best smuggler in the world, who came up with elaborate schemes to pull off some of the greatest jobs of all time. Why go through all the trouble? Pay the fee and relax.

The viewing experience is not made any easier by the overuse of rack-and-pull zoom shots during times when there is no action, as if to make up for five minutes free of chases or gunfire. It’s a jarring, unpleasant, and makes a big budget movie look like it was shot by a drunk teenager.

Featuring a loaded cast doing their best to make the film a worthwhile viewing experience, nothing seems like it can save this film. Mark Wahlberg is in his flared-nostril, wide-eyed face mode, and Diego Luna’s beard looks like it came out of a cereal box. Based on the previews, I was ready to stab Giovanni Ribisi in the face. I always seem to be turned off by whatever weird voice he is putting on, but it worked here. His portrayal never feels overacted, and it’s appreciated.

At 109 minutes, Contraband is not a long film, but it felt like I was sitting in the theater for an eternity. As increasing amounts of sub-moronic curveballs pile on, the madness feels as though it will never end. Worst of all, the ending is painfully obvious, and the fact the movie does nothing to hide its poorly outlined plot doesn’t help. Good luck making it through the halfway point of this film.

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Matthew Schuchman is the founder and film critic of Movie Reviews From Gene Shalit’s Moustache and also the contributing film writer for IPaintMyMind.

Universal Pictures
104 min., dir. by Brett Ratner with Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, and Casey Affleck

Bernie Madoff’s greed affected so many people. If all the victims of his ponzi scheme formed a torch and pitchfork wielding posse, their formation would be visible from space. The whole situation was devoid of humor, but Tower Heist tries to bring some laughs to a small percentage of people affected by a Madoff-type scheme, and has some decent things to share in a wholly unrealistic situation.

Josh Kovacs is the building manager at The Tower, a luxury residency at Columbus Circle in New York City (the exterior and location is that of The Trump International Tower in Columbus Circle). He is revered by his employees and the residents, and is a close confidant of the buildings owner, billionaire Arthur Shaw. When Shaw is arrested by the FBI, Kovacs needs to break the news to The Tower employees that he had asked Shaw to invest their pension fund, money that is now lost. As tensions begin to grow, Kovacs lashes out at the now cold and un-empathetic Shaw who is under house arrest in his penthouse loft.

Unhappy with Josh’s new attitude (and his destructive behavior), Shaw fires Josh and the few employees unlucky enough to be in the room when Kovacs loses his cool. In a bid to make up for his mistakes and help his friends, Josh hatches a plan to steal what he believes is $20 million Shaw has in a hidden safe in his penthouse. Employing the aid of a local crook to train his team of ex-employees and former residents, Kovacs begins his mission to set things straight and nothing will stop him, not even the lead FBI agent on the Shaw case that he is falling for.

Any heist story that features the ragtag upstart crew is generally unbelievable. The situations in Tower Heist are not just unbelievable — they’re down right unfathomable. With a ridiculousness factor of 1000 percent, it’s no use complaining.

At its start, the comedy was failing quickly. A pile of dialogue-driven nonsequiturs poorly delivering character back-story rained a felling of dread upon me. As the story picked up, the jokes got better, but drawn out sections of forced buffoonery hold the film back. There’s a good five to 10 minutes spent watching the protagonists shoplift petty items as a test set forth to them by their lowlife trainer, Slide, yet only one fleeting scene is used to cover their supposed training. While I try to look past these inconsistencies — as I do the ridiculous nature of the film — I can’t help but come back to them as they create a choppy viewing experience that pulls me away from enjoying it.

The saving grace of Tower Heist is its star-studded cast, and each role is played aptly by its chosen actor. It’s difficult to remember Eddie Murphy ever playing a character as despicable as Slide, and Matthew Broderick brought new tricks to the wounded deer act he perfected in Election. Alan Alda used to be a customer of mine when I worked retail and may be the nicest man alive. Seeing him jump into the heartless skin of Arthur Shaw takes all that away and sucks me into his world of greed and moral depravity.

But standing above them all is Ben Stiller and his New York accent. A native New Yorker, Stiller’s New York accent only really comes out in overly colorful skits and characters that lay the speech on thick. Here the accent is prominent and noticeable, but layered in so subtly that it feels natural. It’s a small idiosyncrasy that grounds a real enough character in an unreal story.

Tower Heist delivers some enjoyable laughs. Yet for as good a job the cast does to help the film, it still falls into a pit of convoluted exposition, tired chess analogies, and unrealistic events. The underlining exploration of one criminal turning a “nice guy” into the Robin Hood of his times is lost in the attempt to make the audience laugh. Good for a chuckle here and there, Tower Heist is just too long and too disjointed for a relaxing escape to the movies.

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Matthew Schuchman is the founder and film critic of Movie Reviews From Gene Shalit’s Moustache(http://shalitsstache.com). Also the contributing film writer for IPaintMyMind (http://ipaintmymind.org) he has no issue tearing apart and analyzing any film, even children’s movies.

Universal Pictures/Apatow Productions
146 min., dir. by Judd Apatow with Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Leslie Mann

Whether you’re able to catch Funny People in the theater or wait for its release on DVD, my advice remains the same: watch the movie, laugh your guts out, and then never think about the film ever again. Perhaps more so than any other film in the Judd Apatow series, Funny People attempts the difficult challenge of combining laugh-out-loud hilarity with “real life” seriousness. But like many other films before, the drama steals run-time for the comedy, while the same effect occurs vice-versa. The result is a hypnotic cinematic experience that causes you to believe the film is excellent while viewing, but upon later reflection you may realize how residual laughter from prior scenes had distracted you from the obviously poor writing in others.

However, Judd Apatow’s third film (indicated by the movie poster, as if fans can’t count that high for themselves) delivers a large amount of positivity in spite of its flaws. First of all, Seth Rogen has yet to overstay his welcome in the comedy world, even with the high doses he’s been administered to audiences in the last few years. I’ll admit, I was pretty worried after Observe and Report that the Rogen flame had completely burned out, but his efforts in this latest role have completely restored my faith and respect for the 27-year-old actor.

Secondly, for any of you who might’ve been growing tired of Leslie Mann’s repeated bitch routine we’ve seen over and over from Big Daddy to Knocked Up, Apatow has finally returned Mann to her sweeter side, reminding us of the actress’s versatility and range. In fact, Mann has not portrayed such sweetness since her portrayal of Robin in 1996’s The Cable Guy. On the same note, if you were thinking you couldn’t stomach another shy and introverted character from Jason Schwartzman, prepare to be pleasantly surprised. Schwartzman has fun wandering over to the opposite side of coin, playing Rogen’s arrogant yet hilarious roommate who you’re guaranteed to love to hate.

Lastly, and most importantly, Funny People marks the best Adam Sandler movie since…you know, I can’t even remember. Finally, a Sandler movie that doesn’t place him in a wacky situation (oh man, a remote that controls time!) or as a troubled individual in a melodramatic “think piece” who mumbles every line to show his sensitive side. Instead, Funny People lets Sandler be exactly who he is: himself. Perhaps one of the best treasures in this near two-and-a-half-hour comedy epic is actual footage from Sandler’s early years, the time of his career that consisted of flamboyant impressions, funny faces, and childish sounds. And somehow we even get the sense that Sandler is perfectly aware of what he has lost as his career has “matured.” We see George Simmons, Sandler’s character, regaining a lost part of his life’s joy as he returns to stand-up, meanwhile staring emptily at the TV as it airs his own ridiculous films (which include him playing a merman and a man with a baby’s body).

So with those points mentioned, you could do worse than spend the longer-than-average viewing time on this film. (Unless you purchased the extended director’s cut DVD. If the theatrical run time was nearly 150 minutes, I’d imagine the uncut version would be nicknamed Lord of the Funny People.) And let it be perfectly clear that Apatow could’ve done far worse as well. Even during the moments when it ceases to be funny, Funny People never fails to be fun. I would only suggest to Apatow that he remember his strengths, and to be comfortable with the knowledge that he’s not Woody Allen. I would hate to see, a few years down the road, an Apatow trailer and think, Oh yay, another comedy that teaches me about how difficult life is and how to be a good person.

Make us laugh, Mr. Apatow. Because as of right now, there’s no one better at it in the business.