Strapped upper-class housewife in Kansas City is forced to take a janitorial job at the Federal Reserve Bank where old paper money is destroyed; she gets an idea of how to reserve some of that cash for herself, and enlists two co-workers to help her. Haphazardly-conceived narrative is nitwit comedy one minute, heist drama the next. Diane Keaton comes up with the scheme, which viewers are hardly privy to (she buys a lock and looks something up on the internet); Queen Latifah warns her not to spend any of the money, but a few scenes earlier is seen enrolling her child in a prestigious school and offering to donate a large sum to the library. None of it coheres, and only the scenes set in the Federal Reserve building contain any visual interest. The three leads (Keaton, Latifah, and Katie Holmes) are meant to be portraying lovable losers looking for a break, but all we can see is that they are greedy mercenaries. *1/2 from ****
Review of Mad Money
