Mad Money

Directed by Callie Khouri (best known for writing the famous Ridely Scott film "Thelma & Louise"), Mad Money tells the story of three women working at the Kansas Federal Reserve Bank (though the movie was shot in Louisiana) who work out a system to steal money that is about to be shredded. Obviously, stuff happens.

Mad Money is far from being the best heist film out there. Recent efforts such as After The Sunset, The Italian Job, The Thomas Crown Affair, Entrapment or The Ladykillers are all much cooler. But just as Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's" series is extremely overrated, this widely panned film is quite underrated. Actually, though it is central to the plot, the movie doesn't really focus on the heist element that much preferring to stick with character interactions and light comedy. Here also it's far from the funniest movie out there, but the humor is pleasant and harmless.

The acting is pretty good all around. Diane Keaton is certainly better here than in her horrible performance in the previous year's Because I Said So, and while some may find baffling that Katie Holmes chose this over The Dark Knight, she certainly does a better job here at playing a ditz than her uselessness in Batman Begins. Who knows? Maybe she just doesn't like Batman, maybe she wanted a role that would center more on her, maybe she just loves Thelma & Louise and is willing to have a lower paycheck, which, being married to Tom Cruise, she can totally afford to do. Queen Latifah is her usual self and it's always cool to see Ted Danson and Christopher McDonald (even if it's little more than a glorified cameo).

The movie has flaws yes, and shouldn't really show up on anyone's top 10 or top 200 list. The flashback narration doesn't really work that well and the ending is pretty ludicrous, but what the hell it's just a movie folks. I don't think anyone involved in the making of Mad Money declared that this movie will radically change your views on life. It's just simple harmless entertainment, something pleasant to watch if you stumble upon it.

While I really love Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah, I was not particularly excited about Mad Money. It looked really mediocre, and though I was expecting to be entertained, I was not expecting it to be as fun and interesting as it ended up being. It is a really underrated and funny movie that is an all around great time from beginning to end that I am glad I had the chance of seeing.

While the movie is not exceedingly hilarious, it has it's shining moments of brilliance from the wonderful cast. All the actors and actresses pull off the characters perfectly, giving the film a lovable and bubbly atmosphere. It's extremely interesting too. I could never look away, because I was so interested in the plot; they set everything up really well and the movie was nicely paced with some fun and surprising twists and turns that keep the viewer on edge.

Like I said, easily the best thing about this movie is it's performances which ultimately make the only decent movie otherwise more than decent and highly rewatchable, and the cast pull off the material that could be seen as poor amazingly and overall make the movie worth the while. I enjoyed it highly, and like I said, I wish more people would see it and not be so critical on it. It is entertainment at it's most charming, even if it is not a masterpiece.

"Mad Money" has reasonable entertainment value, great characters, and even a nice little unexpected twist at the end to satisfy the escapist movie-goer. The essential plot of Mad Money is not that original as heist movies go. The formula usually goes something like this: the characters are in a bad financial or similar situation, they find out about some booty supposedly completely unobtainable, devise a scheme to lift the booty which has some intriguing element(s) to it, and then go about getting the booty. Along the way there are some twists and turns to keep it interesting. If it's too easy, it won't work. Part of the fun is whether or not they will get away with it, and how they will do it. Heist movies are almost a dime a dozen these days, with fair such as "Oceans 11" (both the old and the new versions), its subsequent sequels, "Heist", "The Score", etc.

What gives "Mad Money" a unique flavor is the characters who enact the heist, essentially the Neapolitan kind: vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Most Hollywood heist movies star middle-aged men devising elaborate schemes requiring PhD's to perpetrate the heist. In "Mad Money", the team of schemers are three women working at below-sea-level jobs at the Federal Reserve building: a white grandmother of the upper middle-class variety (Diane Keaton), a middle-aged African-American single mother trying to stay above water (Queen Latifah, who actually stuffs packs of bills into a large shredding machine), and Katie Holmes as a 20-something scatter-brain who will probably lose the better part of her hearing by movie's end. How Holmes ever landed a position at the Federal Reserve is one of the many intriguing mysteries of the movie. A rather unlikely swashbuckling gang of hoodlums who sport wash cloths and garbage bags instead of swords.

Keaton and Latifah have the most at stake in their interesting idea for a financial stimulus package: to lift ragged and torn bills from the Federal Reserve before they are about to be shredded. In other words, stealing money that really isn't money. However, I wouldn't try this at home. Year-round, the Federal Reserve acquires tons and tons of ragged and worn bills from banks and other large financial institutions and swaps them for new crisp clean bills. The ragged bills go by way of the shredding and pulping machines.

How they pull off the heist sort of works, although it does fray into a little bit of the fantastic as stealing from a Federal Governmental agency like the Federal Reserve is sort of akin to trying to raise the Titanic. It probably ain't gonna happen. However, a unique chemistry between the actors somehow makes the movie work, and the writers took the story seriously enough to give a lot of unexpected laughs, the way comedies of this type should be written. In other words, luckily the writers didn't try to make the movie "funny".

On a final note, the outstanding talent of the cast has to be Queen Latifah who does an excellent job of portraying a single mom who wants the booty but has ambivalence about the entire scheme. In fact the entire cast is excellent, with Diane Keaton believable as the guiding force behind the heist, and Ted Danson as her bewildered husband. My only criticism is that I would have liked a little more of a hint regarding the twist at the end which did come out of left field. Enjoyable and worth the price of admission, although I doubt I will shell out another 20 bucks for the DVD.

Gabrielle Burton's Manna from Heaven (2002) is a cloying bit of larceny about old folks who pull a heist, so to speak. As bad as that allegedly funny comic caper is, Callie Khouri directs a caper headed by old folk Bridget Cardigan (Diane Keaton) that makes Manna look smart. Mad Money, about three chicks who rip off the Federal Reserve, is a bankrupt comedy for which there was not a laugh for over an hour, and that's with an audience at a sneak preview, one of the easier groups to please.

Diane Keaton shows no comedic skills beyond the lines Woody Allen has given her in previous movies long ago; Queen Latifa as single mama Nina Brewster has no range beyond the broad beam of her smile and her bod; Katie Holmes as daffy Jackie Truman is a much more successful wife of Tom Cruise. The only one with half-way funny lines is Ted Danson as Don Cardigan, but his perfect white-haired, brush-cut hairpiece distracts from his delivery.

Mad Money appears in early January, an infamous graveyard for films studios know flat-out won't be successful but distribute to satisfy investors and actors that the film actually played theaters. I hope this film makes them money across the seas because stateside it would take a serious heist to make any money for this felonious assault on even the notoriously easy American audience.

Three average woman who work at the mint team up together to try and steal the cash they are supposed to be destroying. This is Mad Money, a fun and at times hilarious comedy. Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes work together to make a great team as the three criminals.

Although of its nasty box office performance and harsh reviews, Mad Money delivers as a comedy that is a lot fun from start to finish. The directors and writers were not trying to make anything ground breaking with this film, they just wanted the audience to have a lot of fun and thats what they have achieved. Diane Keaton does well and looks to slowly be returning to form, Queen Latifah is always so much fun and she fails to disappoint and even the usually annoying Katie Holmes is fun to hang around with.

Overall, Mad Money is a lot of fun, mainly because of its three leads who are extremely enjoyable to hang out with.