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Review of Tower Heist (Christophe Beck)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if Christophe Beck's snazzy main theme caught your attention in the film and you would be content with five or six engaging performances of that slightly retro, funky identity on album.

Avoid it... if you place high hopes in the mass of the underscore surrounding the main theme, most of which sounds familiar to Beck's previous applications of contemporary suspense and enthusiastic comedy in an orchestral setting.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Tower Heist: (Christophe Beck) During its several years in the making, Tower Heist evolved from being an all-black comedy led by Eddie Murphy and Chris tucker to an anti-Wall Street heist parody starring a variety of veteran comedy actors. Murphy eventually returned to the production (though continued to be a pain in its rear through the end of shooting) and joined Ben Stiller and Matthew Broderick in depicting the efforts of everyday folks turned criminals in an effort to reclaim money from Alan Alda's New York businessman's Ponzi scheme. Carrying over from the early days of the script in the mid-2000's was involvement by Donald Trump, who allowed the use of his properties to double as the locations (and partial inspiration) for the 2011 film. Ridiculous and implausible twists of plot and character motivations abound in Tower Heist, though critics praised several of the acting performances, including the welcome return of Murphy to 1980's form. While originality in the story was not a paramount concern (countless re-writes plagued the movie for years but did not make anything about it transcendent), the choice of Universal to release the movie for $60 as a pay-per-view cable option in select American markets just three weeks after it debuted in theatres caused a large alliance of theatre chains to threaten to boycott showing the picture, at which point Universal relented and Tower Heist became fairly successful in its box office run. Among the concerns of director Brett Ratner was avoiding too many similarities to the franchise of Ocean's Eleven in the script (which itself prompted some specific revisions), and that point was also raised when approaching the music for Tower Heist. While Ratner had typically worked with major names in the film music industry throughout his career, he was pointed to emerging comedy composer Christophe Beck as a good possible match for this assignment. Beck, although occasionally testing his chops in the drama and fantasy genres, was best known in the 2000's for supplementing song-placement soundtracks in major comedy movies with functionally hip and sometimes fully orchestral underscores, lending his services notably to the franchises for The Hangover and The Pink Panther. His work concurrent to Tower Heist included writing the score for the reemergence of The Muppets, and the more you listen to this music, the more you realize that Beck can write it on auto-pilot.

There are countless composers toiling in Hollywood with careers dominated by silly comedies, though Beck has managed to provide consistently competent music that rivals the best of peers Rolfe Kent and Christopher Lennertz. Ratner's skepticism about Beck's abilities was squashed when the composer provided a main theme for Tower Heist based solely upon the director's basic dictated parameters. There was an effort to define the movie with a dominant, hip title theme saturated with New York pizzazz while avoiding the expected David Holmes sound for the Ocean's Eleven franchise (and those that came before it), and Beck, with the assistance of co-composer Jake Monaco, created exactly that kind of identity. A bit surprising in the main theme for Tower Heist, however, is the continued influence of the 1970's crime caper sound in Beck's approach despite Ratner's desire to avoid that style. Indeed, a groovy bass (which slurs and pulsates with style) and enthusiastic brass section infuse appropriate coolness into the score, though the application of a vibraphone, guitar, and a few other elements does recall the 70's era. As instructed, Beck inserts this theme prominently into several cues, its on screen time glorified by "We Go on Snoopy" and "Gold Rush" and the album containing five minutes in two full arrangements of just this idea. The theme is well integrated into the bulk of the score, which remains more traditionally orchestral in its demeanor. The ensemble's style is very similar to that heard in the suspense and action cues of Beck's scores for The Pink Panther movies, but with a certain dose of American funk replacing the prior works' international flavor. Rarely is the action music in Tower Heist very substantial, though there is a somewhat humorous piano-thumping emulation of John Rambo's sneaking motif from the First Blood franchise in "Courthouse Con." The weightiest symphonic passage is arguably the first half of "Shawstafari," which finally melds beefy orchestral might with the vintage style. In this and similar cues (like "Shaft Fail"), the action sequences are really too short in duration for their snare-ripping attitude to maintain your interest on album. The score-only product is only 40 minutes in length, an appropriate running time for a work that pushes all the right buttons for this kind of film without presenting anything radically new. You'll have to appreciate the snazzy title theme's five or six major presentations for that album to really mean anything to you, however, because outside of that modernized but somewhat mundane identity of funk, Beck could very well have been on auto-pilot for the rest.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 40:26

• 1. Theme From Tower Heist (3:30) • 2. Code Black (2:52) • 3. Shawfrontation (2:07) • 4. The Germ (1:55) • 5. Lester's Loss (0:58) • 6. My Little Bitch (1:28) • 7. Macy's Day (2:45) • 8. The Marshall Swindle (1:09) • 9. Right at Rikers (0:44) • 10. Fifty Dollar Thrift Lift (1:55) • 11. The Charlie Deception (0:55)

• 12. We Go on Snoopy (3:00) • 13. Courthouse Con (1:50) • 14. Grand Theft Auto (3:22) • 15. Gonna Call Ralph (1:06) • 16. Strong Box Situation (0:58) • 17. Shaft Fail (0:48) • 18. Odessa's Cake (1:39) • 19. Arrested (0:53) • 20. Shawstafari (2:42) • 21. Gold Rush (2:09) • 22. End Titles (1:29)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes a list of performers and a note from the director about working with Beck.

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