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Tim Briody: This is a bit of a head scratcher. The trailer, for the most part, kills, and this is the Eddie Murphy we've been waiting forever to see again. As David said, it's no Pluto Nash or Envy, but somehow this didn't quite connect with audiences in the way anyone expected it would. It's a little weird to see a $25 million opening as a disappointment, but there you go.

Matthew Huntley: The $24 million figure is more or less what I expected from this safe, generic comedy, and I'm with Bruce in that I'm not sure why anyone expected anything more than this. Consider the factors: Ben Stiller is playing his usual average, quirky self (you could probably transplant his character from any one of his comedies and put it into another one and they'd be exactly the same); Eddie Murphy is returning to his classic, albeit old-fashioned (and therefore not as bankable) routine; and the entire plot has an overly familiar, Ocean's 11-type vibe that's been done too many times before. Given the facts of the case, why would this movie open in the more prestigious $30 million + range? Nobody involved in the movie - the cast, the filmmakers, the studio - seemed to take any sort of risk and they got what they bargained for: a respectable but relatively modest opening. This is hardly a surprise, but for the sake of the industry, at least it's not a disaster. And for the record, the first Rush Hour is still pretty good.

Max Braden: It's a welcome sight to have the old Eddie Murphy back on screen, but that sentiment is one of "Finally, you've brought yourself back to Acceptable performance." not one of "Finally, this is the movie I've been waiting to see all year." Take Murphy's icon out of the equation and you really just have another bumbling-bromance type of genre film that (off the top of my head) The Hangover spawned. In just this year we saw The Hangover 2 do very well on opening weekend, but Hall Pass opened to $13 million in February and Horrible Bosses opened to $28 million in early July. The Tower Heist trailer wasn't without its faults either, showing very little other than reaction expressions, especially the perfectly understandable "I don't know what I'm doing here" one on Matthew Broderick's face. In that light, $25 million is acceptable for what Tower Heist was going to be.

Jim Van Nest: It would seem that everyone here at BOP was excited to see the old Eddie Murphy again. Here's a thought: what would this have done without Eddie Murphy? Apparently, it would have tanked hard, and that has to fall on Stiller, I think. I think it's that Stiller is headed in the opposite direction of Murphy and what we got at the box office was the middling result.

Shalimar Sahota: Along with Matthew, this is pretty close to what I was expecting too (I didn't think it would break out to over $30 million).

That the screenplay is co-written by Ted Griffin, who also wrote the remake of Ocean's Eleven, is also why I found it a bit too similar to that heist movie (hell, they both even star Casey Affleck). Still, I find this an okay result. Not something to jump for joy about, but I wouldn't cry about it either. I think it'll still make its production budget back domestically. Also, after the failure of Meet Dave and Imagine That, I wouldn't have been all that surprised if Murphy stuck to lending his voice to animated films. He's part of a very good ensemble cast here that must have been attracted to something good to consider working on this. Personally I'd like to see Murphy back in R-rated territory.

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