A guy earns the moniker of the “Roofman Robber” when he breaks in through the roofs of several fast-food restaurants. But then after being sent to prison and breaking out from there, he decides to hideout in a toy store for months until he can get hold of a fake passport. Based on a real story, this dramedy is supposed to be a fun look at a charming thief and his misadventures. But between the pic’s foul language, immoralities and poor choices, audiences are left with all the wrong messages.
Jeffrey Manchester is a likable, charming guy. At least, on the surface of things.
I mean, Jeff wants to do right by his kids. But, well, he just hasn’t been able to make a go of it. And frankly, that’s why his ex took the children and drove off on her own. She figured she could do better without him.
Jeff’s army buddy, Steve, points out that Jeff isn’t completely hapless, though. Jeff has always been great at observing things, for instance. And it’s true: Ask Jeff any tiny detail about the world around him and he can fill you in in a heartbeat.
Steve simply suggests that Jeff apply those skills in the right direction … whether legal or illegal. Steve, for instance, has parlayed his army skills into a passport-forging side hustle.
That’s when Jeff lands on an idea: McDonalds!
There are 10,000 nearly identical McDonalds restaurants out there. And they all have nearly identical systems, nearly identical patterns, nearly identical weaknesses.
Before you can say, I’ll take a Big Mac, please, Jeff has set himself up in the McDonalds-robbing business. He scales to the roof at night and pounds his way through. And he becomes known as the “Roofman Robber.”
However, after Jeff gets away with some 45 robberies and buys a sweet little house, the cops come calling. And Jeff goes to prison. But if he can figure out how to break into a McDonalds, surely he can break out of prison. So he does just that.
Wouldn’t you know it, though, when trying to get some new passport papers from Steve, Jeff finds out that his buddy will be out of town for several months. So, Jeff’ll have to hole up somewhere until Steve returns.
That’s when Jeff lands on another idea: Toys ‘R’ Us!
He’ll find an inconspicuous walled-off area and make a bedroom for himself during the day, when the store is full of customers. He’ll eat baby food and candy and bathe in the bathroom sink. It’ll be perfect.
Problem is, Jeff is a nice guy. And when he hears an attractive store employee, Leigh, discussing her church’s toy drive, he can’t help himself. He steals from the store’s abundant stock and carts the haul over to the church.
And he gets spotted and invited in for a potluck.
And he comes up with a false name and identity.
And he meets Leigh face to face.
And he can’t help being a likable, charming guy. At least, on the surface of things.
Jeff is friendly and charming with everyone he encounters. He’s kind even to the people he’s robbing at gunpoint. (With a few exceptions.)
Unfortunately, for all of Jeff’s likeability, he still lies, steals and cheats with abandon. And even though he does so because he wants people (ironically) to like him, that’s not so great. But this destructive pattern of behavior eventually leads to a personal revelation:
“I started to realize,” Jeff sadly proclaims, “That all those people didn’t need me to give them things. They just needed me. My time.” And Jeff apologizes for his lies and deceptions.
That’s a nice sentiment. And there are probably a number of people in the world who could benefit from that sort of insight.
Jeff is pulled in to converse and interact with the people in Leigh’s church. We see them singing Sunday morning praise choruses and contemporary Christmas songs about God and Jesus. We also hear “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful.” Leigh professes to be a stalwart believer. …
However, after the second time meeting Jeff, Leigh asks him on a date and quickly invites him into her bed. Which he readily accepts. They have sex: He’s apparently naked and mostly covered by a sheet. She’s wearing a bra. We see her bare hips and legs.
Oddly enough, after that intimacy, Jeff suggests he might give Leigh’s teen daughter a driving lesson, and she balks, saying, “We hardly know each other!”
When Jeff and Leigh first meet, Leigh suspects that Jeff may be gay because of how he deals with the women in a church group. He assures her he isn’t.
Jeff soaps and scrubs his body in the Toys ‘R’ Us bathroom. We see his soapy torso from the waist up. Later, though, someone enters the store while he’s scrubbing in the bathroom—his clothes drying in a toy aisle. Jeff sprints out of the bathroom covered head to toe in soap suds. We see him fully nude from the rear and then only partially covered from the front. He then climbs over a wall (barely keeping everything covered).
A Christian women’s group flirts with Jeff and tosses around some sexual quips. Leigh’s older teen daughter jokes about her mother’s sex life with Jeff as well. Jeff calls his young daughter, Becky, and discovers that his ex-wife has a boyfriend over.
Jeff dances in the toy store late at night, dressed in undershorts and a shirt. We see a quick glimpse of a woman wearing a bikini on TV. Steve’s girlfriend wears a low-cut top with a bare midriff.
Jeff crashes onto counters and floors, falling from holes he’s cut and smashed through on the roofs of several different buildings. He also smashes his way through a store’s plasterboard walls. He picks up a large, heavy statue to bash his way through a bulletproof window.
Jeff robs people at gunpoint on a couple of occasions. He forces one group into a freezer; he demands that another group of people bind each other’s wrists and lay face down on the floor. In that latter case, a security guard reaches for his weapon, and Jeff pistol-whips the man, leaving him lying in the blood seeping from his forehead.
Police subdue Jeff on two separate occasions. One time, they chase and tackle him as a group, rolling and struggling down a grassy hillside. The other time, an officer slams Jeff into a wall and several men wrestle him to the ground.
Jeff forces the Toys ‘R’ Us manager, Mitch, to open a packet of cash with an ink bomb in it. It explodes, painfully, in Mitch’s face.
Jeff drives wildly in a car that he’s possibly going to buy. He races down a street and slides sideways to a stop.
There are 15 f-words and 10 s-words in the dialogue, along with multiple uses each of the words “h—,” “d–n” and “a–.” God and Jesus’ names are both misused a total of seven times (God is combined with “d–n” on four of those). The n-word is used twice.
Steve and his girlfriend both smoke cigarettes.
Jeff’s five-year-old daughter witnesses him being violently subdued by police. After he goes to prison, his ex-wife declares that he can’t call their daughter anymore.
We watch as a man urinates in front of the camera, his crotch just out of sight.
Jeff steals thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise from the toy store, as well as burgling multiple restaurants and committing identity fraud.
There’s an odd incongruity about Roofman that’s, frankly, difficult to swallow.
On one hand, the filmmakers want to share this “based on a true story” tale with something of a cheery wink and a smile. They do all they can to get you to really like the “charming” protagonist—casting Channing Tatum in that role with all his flirtatious/awkward/cute amplifier dials cranked up to max.
But here’s the rub: Tatum’s Jeffrey Manchester isn’t just some put-upon, adorable guy who’s down on his luck (aw, shucks). No, he’s a guy who uses his time and ample skillset to steal, cheat, lie and emotionally injure everyone he comes in contact with.
Jeff may seem like a nice guy when he offers you his coat while locking you in a sub-zero freezer. But he just robbed you at gunpoint! He’s not a good dude.
The film wants to avoid all of those inconvenient details, though. It promotes a form of moral relativism: the sort of stuff that tends to be at the crux of a lot of our current societal woes. Hey, even the Christian mom at the story’s core is ready to sexually compromise herself for little more than a nice smile from an endearing stranger. And the one positive message to be gleaned from this tale feels a bit tagged on. It’s a nice little tucked-in “lesson” to justify having spent two hours watching Jeff’s poor choices.
All the while the movie sighs out, Don’t ya just love him?
For my part, I have to say no. I didn’t really like Jeff or this movie about him at all.
For those who don’t care about silly things like right and wrong, though, I’ll note that if you decide to slip into this rather simple and vapid movie, you’ll also be immersing yourself in quite a bit of foul language, emotional deception and bad choices.
But who cares? It’s charming. Right?
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
