'Mad Money' shortchanges adept actresses

(C+) There's a robbery going on in Mad Money, but it has nothing to do with what happens in the movie.

The pleasures of this slight caper film are strictly small-screen, as three talented actresses walk through quaint roles before they hurry on to the next project.

Diane Keaton, stuck since 2003's Something's Gotta Give in roles far beneath her, is Bridget Cardigan, a pampered, high-society wife slapped with reality when her husband loses his cushy executive position. Forced to become the family breadwinner, she lands a job at Kansas City, Mo.'s Federal Reserve Bank ... as a janitor.

It's bad enough that she's cleaning floors and toilets for a living. What's worse is that while she toils away, hundreds of thousands of dollars are literally going up in smoke around her, as one of the bank's main jobs is destroying worn currency.

This simply won't do. So she recruits a pair of similarly desperate and offended co-workers and comes up with an elaborate plan to pocket some of the destined-for-ashes cash. What's the harm, she figures, in forcing the government to do a little recycling?

Her co-conspirators are Nina Brewster (Queen Latifah), a single mom striving mightily to provide for her son, and Jackie Truman (Katie Holmes), a good-natured airhead sharing a trailer with her even-more-clueless boyfriend. Nina is the trio's conscience, the one who can always be counted on to point out that what they're doing is wrong, while Jackie provides the brawn, simply doing what she's told. That leaves Bridget to be the brains of the operation.

Mad Money opens with the three women and their respective mates trying to dispose of vast amounts of cash, so it's clear from the outset that things aren't going to quite work out. The fun, such as it is, comes from watching how things ended up going so wrong.

Some fun. Latifah and Holmes, while hardly creating characters that will make their career-highlight reels, at least seem to be having fun. Latifah, doubtless grateful for a role that avoids the pratfalls she had to endure in last year's The Perfect Holiday, even brings a welcome note of dignity to the proceedings. Holmes, although overdoing the gum-chewing sass a bit, displays a heretofore unseen comic touch that makes Jackie surprisingly endearing.

But Keaton, who has adopted dithering as her default acting mode of late, never seems comfortable as Bridget. Even in the film's poster, her body language looks forced, staged. Things don't get any better in the film itself.

Director Callie Khouri, an Oscar-winner for her Thelma & Louise script, no doubt envisioned Mad Money as a madcap comedy with female-empowerment overtones - the men in the film, including Ted Danson as Bridget's worrywart husband, are strictly afterthoughts, leaving the women to do all the heavy lifting.

But the script, adapted by Glenn Gers and John Mister from a 2001 British made-for-television film, is all strained contrivance, pulled off by characters who are more clever than funny ... and they aren't all that clever.

And then there's the film's dubious morality - Keaton's character does all this so she can keep throwing high-society garden parties, and we're supposed to sympathize with her? Mad Money won't leave you mad, just disappointed and feeling vaguely cheated, at so much talent so blithely squandered.

>>>Mad Money (Millennium Films) Starring Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes. Directed by Callie Khouri. Rated PG-13. Time 104 minutes.

chris.kaltenbach@baltsun.com

Related topic galleries: Katie Holmes, Callie Khouri, Employees, Federal Reserve, Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Ted Danson

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