DVD REVIEW: Mad Money
By: Scott Rader
5/19/2008
What's so funny about Mad Money is that it isn't bad for the reasons you'd think. Well, that I'd think anyway. Putting Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes together in a movie sounded like pure, obnoxious torture. Alas, they were all easy to handle, especially Latifah who has become a blight on the film world. Holmes is surprisingly good, although completely wasted. That's right; Katie Holmes of Dawson's Creek and Tom Cruise fame was wasted. She had a good, quirky character thing going, but just had to spin her tires for 103 minutes. And Keaton is never really terrible; she has just become the queen of bad decisions.
Mad Money should fall as a bad decision for everyone involved. Yeah, I even feel bad Latifah. But when they read the script they probably couldn't grasp how horribly written and plotted this thing was.
They probably just noticed that the heist was pretty nifty. And it is. The way they go about stealing money is pretty ingenious, although most heist movies would give it a little more flash. Stealing money is just something that happens in this movie. Like everything else, however, it is so utterly boring.
Seriously, was this supposed to be a crime comedy? Because it's not funny. Ever. It's pretty much the worst written movie, dialogue-wise, I've ever had the displeasure of watching. And they don't play up the best part of a caper film . . . the caper. Come on, these women had to be having some kind of funny or some jerk should have had it stuck to them. Or something. Instead, everything just plods along at an excruciating pace. And no fun is had by anyone.
