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MAD MONEY Send This Review to a Friend
After the season for heavyweight films, comedies are welcome in the New Year. “Mad Money” is shamelessly far-fetched, but a bright cast helps pull off a fair share of laughs while providing a dash of woman-power satisfaction. The direction is by Callie Khouri, who wrote the screenplay for “Thelma and Louise,” and here she is working from a screenplay by Glenn Gers. The story involves three resourceful ladies who make a habit of robbing a Federal Reserve bank where they work—are you ready?—as janitors.
Diane Keaton, who knows how to milk comic potential, plays Bridget, who with her husband Don (Ted Danson), finds times hard after he loses his job and can’t get work. There goes their comfortable lifestyle. Bridget sets out to find work, but an interview scene humorously shows how ill-prepared she is for anything. Has she ever worked at a hotel? No, but she has stayed at hotels.
She does qualify to work as a janitor at the bank. There she meets Nina (Queen Latifah) and Jackie (Katie Holmes), and their job is to shred old money. Trashing leads to stashing as they figure out how to pack old bills away in their clothing and get away with it—at least for a time.
The three are very funny--Keaton with her effervescence, Latifah with her brassiness and Holmes with ditsy behavior. They make a tough match for the feds.
The screenplay piles on improbabilities, and there is obvious straining to keep the plot spinning, but affability dominates the movie, with ample laughs along the way to make for a light, not unwelcome diversion. An Overture Films release.
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