Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic here with the Slate Spoiler Special

podcast on Tower Heist, the new action movie starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy and directed

by Brett Ratner of Rush Hour fame.

Here in the Slate studio with me is David Hagland.

Hi, David.

Hi, Dana.

How should I introduce you?

You're the editor of Browbeat, Slate's Culture Blog.

Yes, that's right. And my new spoiler companion, I'm really happy you wanted to come to this movie.

Because Tower Hice was a little bit of a hard sell.

Well, you know, it's interesting to me because it was fun.

And I was interested in part just because I knew it was inspired, you know,

or that the Bernie Madoff story was somehow a part of it,

that it was picking up on the anger that people feel about what he

did. And I think probably also a broader anger about the economy. So I thought, okay, well, this

will be interesting if for no other reason to see how the movie handles that. Right. It's not the

first thing you associate with a Brett Retner action movie, that it's going to fold in some kind of,

you know, social commentary about the recession. But so overall, you did have a positive reaction?

I did. I enjoyed it. I mean, it was fun. The pacing was pretty brisk. Pretty swift. It's 104 minutes.

I just checked the running time of the movie. And maybe that accounts for the fact that even that we both

agree that it was full of plot holes and in some ways was kind of absurd, we both enjoyed ourselves. It was over

with quickly. It wasn't a bloated blockbuster. Right. I suspect that some of those plot holes

...