Mad Money

Set in Kansas City, Diane Keaton stars as Bridget – a lady who lunches, but doesn’t need to work until her husband, Don (Ted Danson), is laid off from the job that has provided them with a lower wealthy class style of living (I would say upper middle class, but they are doing much much better than that). Without any other alternatives, Bridget takes a janitor job at the Federal Reserve where old, beaten and weathered money is destroyed. Of course, after cleaning toilets for a few days, this gives her an idea.

When Bridget teams up with Nina (Queen Latifah) and Jackie (Katie Holmes), can this threesome steal the money destined to be destroyed, or will they get caught in the act?

Mad Money is not the worst movie you will ever see, but you think it would be better with this gathering of talent. Keaton, Latifah and Holmes lack the chemistry needed to make us care for the team with Keaton almost too overly enthusiastic in pursuit of making us laugh, Latifah never straining to create a unique character and Holmes just too goofy even for a goofy character, because she is forcing everything.

Even worse, the scheme seems too simple. In a great caper movie like one of the Ocean’s 11 movies, the audience is treated to an intricate plot full of rich details to excite our imaginations and make our minds work. In Mad Money, the most detail we get is how the women want to sneak the cash out in their underpants. Director Callie Khourri never finds the rhythm of a caper movie, and goes through the motions when trying to show us the plan.

Then, writer Glenn Gers attempts to fill our characters with outrage at society and the unfairness of the world to justify the illegal behavior of stealing money, as if they are anti-heroes in the spirit of Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. Sadly, Mad Money is another example of a movie where ethics and the law don’t matter and the audience is supposed to support these criminals in some sort of fantasy fulfillment of sticking it to the man or being rich at all costs.

Mad Money’s creative team tries to walk too fine a line between romp and drama, which throws the tone all over the place, and makes the actors abandon any hope of delivering consistent performances.

Mad Money is rated PG-13 for sexual material and language, and brief drug references