Folks in Peanuts circles were talking about the new film Tower Heist and how it has a Snoopy appearance (in Macy’s Parade balloon form); some of the talk made it sound like they did something interesting with it. I had otherwise been mixed about seeing this film (strong cast, but a director whose works I’ve disliked in the past, and unexciting promos), but I reckoned I had to see for myself, so I could report to my blog reading audience.

If you’re thinking of seeing this for the Peanuts aspects, skip it. The use is fleeting, unimportant to the work, andin no way inspired; the entire Thanksgiving parade aspect is dreadfully underused.

And if you’re thinking of seeing this for other reasons, I wouldn’t recommend it. There are a few good moments, and mostly good performances (interesting to see Eddie Murphy handle some things more in the style of his earlier work than what admittedly little I’ve seen of his more recent films), but the writing is flabby. The laugh lines are not quite as good as they ought to be. This is a heist film, and a good heist film lives and dies on the details and the internal logic (not the realism, necessarily; things can be fairly false so long as they rebuilt into the structure and make internal sense.) This one is sloppy; they clearly had their idea of what would make a “cool” climax, and tossed out logic in order to reach it. It wasn’t a horrible time spent in the theater, but there were certainly better films to see in the multiplex.

A little Snoopy makes everything better, but this oen would’ve needed a whole lot of Snoopy.

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