Somewhere, Katharine Hepburn and her costume designer are smiling.
Diane Keaton is copying Hepburn's habit of raising her neckline with her age - not that there's anything wrong with that, but it looks silly when applied to a janitor's uniform. That is what Keaton wears for part of Mad Money, a so-so caper film about three women who rob the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.
Keaton is Bridget, a suburbanite who had a cushy life until her husband (Ted Danson) lost his job. Her checks to their cleaning woman bounce, for heaven's sake, and she's forced to take a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve.
That's where she meets Nina (Queen Latifah), a single mother of two, and Jackie (Katie Holmes), a kooky cookie who dances to the music constantly playing in her ears. Bridget hatches a scheme to relieve the Fed of the worn money it's about to shred and enlists the others in her plan.
Mad Money opens with futile attempts to destroy the evidence, so we know something went awry. It spins the action back three years to show how fingers got so sticky, although it withholds the outcome until the very end.
Directed by Callie Khouri, who also directed Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and won an Oscar for writing Thelma & Louise, this comedy is as familiar as the money removed from circulation and intended for destruction.
It has the requisite scene of characters dividing, counting and tossing money into the air, which doesn't work as well when the bills are dirty and old, instead of freshly printed and crisp. In these days of retina recognition and high-tech locks, Bridget's scheme revolves around an awfully old-fashioned safeguard for a system shredding millions each week.
In case you were wondering - and I was - the Federal Reserve stopped burning currency in the early 1980s due to problems with air pollution and efficiency, its Web site reports. It switched to shredding and Kansas City is, indeed, home to a Reserve Bank.
The only character who seems the least bit real is Latifah's, although she is also the most sensible of the bunch. Holmes has to work too hard at being zany (although smart underneath), and it might be easier to root for Bridget if she were really down on her luck. Still, Keaton plays her scenes with the light comedic touch that has served her well for decades.
The script was inspired by a 2001 British TV movie called Hot Money, about three women who plot to steal worn-out bank notes from the Bank of England. Mad Money, however, loses all grounding in reality by the end, which seems as phony as a counterfeit bill.
The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Barbara Vancheri is movie editor of the Post-Gazette.
Contact her at:
bvancheri@post-gazette.com.
First Published January 18, 2008, 12:33 p.m.
