Review of Mad Money (2008) by Shawne ~ — 23 Aug 2008

With the names involved in [b]Mad Money[/b], you might have had cause to expect a little more than what you eventually get: after all, stars Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Ted Danson and, yes, even Mrs Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, have proven on other, earlier occasions that they have star power and charm enough to carry lesser vehicles and yet make them enjoyable. And certainly it sounds like a fun premise: the eternally loopy Keaton plays Bridget Cardigan, a well-to-do society wife who must readjust to a working world too harsh for her limited qualifications when her husband Don (Danson) loses his job. She becomes a janitor at a local bank, where she meets her eventual partners-in-crime, caring, hard-up mom Nina (Latifah) and space cadet Jackie (Holmes). They hatch a plan to steal discarded money from the bank - the kind that will be shredded and taken out of the financial system, the kind that (presumably) no one will miss. Of course, ego, greed and a whole lot of healthy squabbling gets in the way of the smooth operation of Bridget's master plan...

There was room here to make a smart, sassy crime caper, one charged with themes of female empowerment and shot through with the pure energy and chemistry you'd imagine a cast involving Keaton and Latifah could whip up. Unfortunately, as is characteristic of the movies Keaton has been working on since her smash-hit comeback [i]Something's Gotta Give[/i], the material doesn't quite match the talent. The film is little more than the amiable, undemanding kind of fare that would play on an obscure cable channel, the kind that you pause to watch if you flicked past and recognised the actors - and while you might not regret watching it as a way to kill time, you're not likely to remember much of it either. The hijinks to which all the women get up to, including flirting with security guards or chatting desperately in bathrooms while they lay the groundwork for their plan, come across as rote and predictable, rather than tense and exciting. The twist at the end, as loyalties are betrayed and recovered, is hardly surprising or particularly thrilling.

The most fun and bankable part of the show remains its cast. Keaton tries her level best to infuse proceedings with her trademark brand of flighty, quirky humour, and she undoubtedly shares most of the film's best scenes with Danson and Latifah. The three actors have a ball playing off each other, even though Danson doesn't get to do much more than wring his hands at Bridget's wacky antics and Latifah is hiding her comic sensibilities firmly under a veneer of respectability as befits her relatively more mature character. When they banter with what few moments of charm afforded them by the pedestrian script, the movie sparks to life somewhat. Holmes, by the way, is not bad in this role - but then again, her role merely requires her to play a ditzy blonde (except she isn't [i]actually[/i] blonde) and bop along to the music perpetually playing on her character's headphones. Easy enough, surely.

A forgettable way to kill a couple of hours, with occasional moments that amuse - but these are scattered too far apart to lift this film out of the haze of mediocrity that unfortunately shrouds it, in spite of its talented and game-for-anything cast. Rather a shame, really...