Mad Money (2008)

The premise of the 2008 caper film Mad Money seemed pretty interesting to me: Three ordinary women discover a way to smuggle money out of the supposedly impenetrable Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. It was marketed, if I recall correctly, as a comedy more than anything else, and starred Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, and Ted Danson. I actually wanted to see Mad Money when it came out in theaters, but I was scared away by all the negative and lukewarm reviews it received, so I decided to wait until the DVD release.

It turns out that most of the reviewers were way off base on this one. Although Mad Money wasn’t exactly laugh-out-loud funny, it was far more entertaining than I expected it to be. As a result, I had a good time and regret having put off the film for this long.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The story opens with scenes of the main characters shredding, burning, and otherwise disposing of huge quantities of money. The authorities are closing in on them, so they’re trying to get rid of the evidence as quickly as possible. Just when the investigators get the go ahead to move in and arrest the suspects, the film flashes back to the beginning of the saga.

Bridget (played by Keaton) and Don Cardigan (Danson) are aging middle-class people who were looking forward to their retirement in a few years. Then the unthinkable happened: Don got downsized, leaving them a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt with no income at all. They’re on the verge of losing their home, their cars, everything, with no relief in sight. Don has been looking for work for more than a year, but no one will hire him. Bridget finally decides that she must swing into action in order to save them from becoming homeless.

There are a couple of obstacles, though. For one thing, Bridget has been a homemaker for most of her adult life and hasn’t been a part of the workforce in ages. For another thing, she doesn’t have any marketable skills, and her degree in Comparative Literature isn’t opening any doors for her. The only job she can find is as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank, so she swallows her pride and takes it.

One day while shopping in a hardware store, Bridget happens to see a padlock that looks strikingly similar to the ones that the Fed uses on their money carts. She then quickly formulates a plan to steal money from the bank, money that is slated to be destroyed anyway and is therefore completely untraceable.

Of course, Bridget can’t do this alone, so she recruits two coworkers, Nina Brewster (Latifah) and Jackie Truman (Holmes) to help her out. Jackie’s job at the Fed requires her to move money carts from an accounting room to the shredding room where Nina actually feeds the bills into an incinerator, so both are perfectly placed for the scheme.

The rest of the film then shows how the women perfect their plan, execute it, and successfully steal money for three long years before anyone suspects what’s going on. Then, when the investigators move in, the women manage to get off on a loophole before a final twist leaves viewers with a satisfying conclusion.

My Reaction: Ok, first of all let me say that Mad Money is certainly not going to win any Oscars, so if you’re looking for that type of movie, you’re going to be extremely disappointed. But obviously that wasn’t the intention of the filmmakers here. They just wanted to make a fun, lighthearted caper, and they succeeded with that.

One of the reasons I liked Mad Money was for the solid casting choices. Diane Keaton was perfect as Bridget Cardigan, a meek grandmother type that you’d never suspect of operating a major theft ring. Queen Latifah was equally strong as Nina, the only consistent voice of reason among the women, and Katie Holmes was surprisingly fun as airhead Jackie. All of the characters were likable, an essential component to a film like this where it’s critical for the audience to root for a favorable outcome.

Another reason that I liked the film was that it was very fast-paced and didn’t have any boring parts at all. The running time is 104 minutes, but it feels a lot shorter than that because the script didn’t deviate into a hundred boring subplots that nobody cared about.

The one thing I would have chanced about Mad Money, however, was the way the film began with scenes of the authorities closing in on the women. I would have preferred to have that outcome be up in the air for the duration rather than a foregone conclusion.

Overall, I enjoyed Mad Money a lot more than I thought I would. Don’t let the major critics scare you away from this one. It’s a fun film that’s definitely worth watching. I give it 4 stars out of 5.