The cast of Mad Money has the “speak no evil” part down. “Hear” and “see” still need some work.
Mad Money should have been released in 1992. In 1992 its limp-wristed feminine empowerment subtext might have actually been noteworthy. In 1992 Diane Keaton’s mediocre acting could have been overlooked. In 1992 seeing a 3-D screen transition wouldn’t have given me cancer of the good-taste gland.
In Mad Money three clichés rob a federal reserve bank. The all-too-aptly named Bridget Cardigan (Diane Keaton) is a WASP who likes being a WASP and when her husband loses his job she’s forced to go to work at the bank as a janitor. While working there she gets the idea to steal out-of-circulation currency before it can make it to the shredder. In order to do so she has to enlist the help of Nina Brewster (Queen Latifa) a single mother living in the projects who wants a better life for her kids and Jackie Truman (Katie Holmes) a lovable dim-wit who lives in a trailer park with her meat-packing husband (Adam Rothenberg). The heist plot itself is interspersed with weighty narration by a few of the characters while they undergo police interrogation going on and on about our culture of desire and the destructive power of greed. Or something.
The first robbery goes well and the women continue to steal money over the course of several years while the narrators chime in every now and then to remind the audience that greed is a bad thing. Beyond the triteness of the plot the inadequate examination of the characters’ motivations and about 35 minutes of rote exposition Mad Money is watchable if rather banal and formulaic. There are crises complications obstacles and the surmounting thereof. Everyone learns a lesson at the end though there are a few plot-spoiling issues with the film’s moralizing that make the ending a little more confusing than it should be.
Mad Money is a bad movie and for the most part it’s perfectly OK with being a bad movie. It never demands much from its audience and its hilarious 3-D screen transitions might impress someone who hasn’t seen a film since 1958. What makes it an unforgivably bad film is its intellectual posturing. The narrative segments set the film up (in a ham-fisted way) to deliver some kind of message about greed or consumerism. When the message finally hits it’s as utterly unoriginal as the rest of the film and is quickly subverted by a deus ex machina ending besides.
If Mad Money had been made in 1992 it might have been the kind of film you could safely take your grandma to. As it is she’ll think it’s as hilariously awful as you will.
