(andPOP) - I walked into Mad Money expecting another groaner on the level of last year's Diane Keaton-led Because I Said So. Having low or zero expectations for a mediocre studio movie often seems to increase my enjoyment, however (see my reviews for The Ex and Mr. Woodcock), so the honest truth is I was pleasantly surprised by it.
Mad Money is a remake of a high-concept British TV movie in which a group of cleaners plot to steal from England's national bank. In this version the national bank has been replaced by the Kansas City federal reserve, but the concept is the same: the cleaners smuggle cash that's old and used and was going to be ripped to shreds anyway. That's a better setup than I, or anyone watching this movie probably expected, and I'll bet the director (Thelma and Louise screenwriter Callie Khouri) knows it too.
The problem is, while our cleaners - led by Keaton's upper-middle class housewife whose husband lost his job and is $250,000 in debt, and with support from Queen Latifah's single mom and Katie Holmes' trailer trash - initially capture that universal feeling of economic frustration, in the end they become too greedy.
The crucial factor in any heist movie is that we identify with the thieves. We know that what they're doing is wrong, but we want them to succeed anyway - because they deserve the money, or because they're stealing from someone who doesn't, or because the company they're stealing from won't miss it anyway. Once that factor is gone, our investment in the movie is too. There's a point in Mad Money where our protagonists have stolen enough to reach their initial goals - and against everything we've seen up to that point, they continue stealing anyway. At that point the movie lost me.
This isn't a bad film. Like most mid-level studio fare it's more enjoyable if you like the actors (I remain a fan of Keaton and will see just about anything with Latifah, not to mention I was pleasantly surprised to see Ted Danson, Stephen Root, Christopher McDonald and 24's Roger Cross among the supporting cast), and it begins with the main characters destroying the cash and being caught (the story is relayed as they're telling it to police), so it's certainly more engaging than it needed to be. It isn't a good movie either - a couple of details are hazy, and Latifah's single mom status sometimes comes off as a manipulative plot device - but it means well, is occasionally funny, and more or less succeeds in doing what it sets out to.
