Mad Money

Mad Money

Directed by Callie Khouri (PG-13)

A woman on the brink of financial ruin plots a bank heist with her gal pals.

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Mad Money is “another fable of sisters doing it for themselves,” said Stephen Holden in The New York Times. After making her screenwriting debut with Thelma & Louise in 1991, Callie Khouri became “Hollywood’s go-to gal for stories of empowered sisterhood.” Her latest tough-girl effort, Mad Money, has the girls but none of the guts. Diane Keaton is an upper-middle-class wife whose husband loses his job. So she gets a lousy gig as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank, where she forms an unlikely friendship with a single mom (Queen Latifah) and a trailer-park twit (Katie Holmes). Desperate for cash and dumb enough to think they can outsmart the system, the women plan to take discarded currency from the Fed and recycle it for their own use. Mad Money makes the whole scheme look too easy, said Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. There’s no real suspense or danger. The plan is “simple, the complications are few, and they don’t get excited much beyond some high-fives and hugs and giggles.” Khouri’s film never “capitalizes on its get-rich-quick premise,” said Justin Chang in Variety. Rather than take any chances, the director “settles for a routine payday.” Like the crime the ladies commit, Khouri’s story is far from perfect.