|
|
Mad Money
Sorry excuse
2007
Review: June 3, 2008
Director: Callie Khouri
Starring: Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, Ted Danson
Don’t waste it.
THE SETUP:
Three women working at the Federal Reserve bank decide to steal from it.
DISCUSSION:
This was my in-flight movie selection on the way out to Seattle, and these are really the best [and only] circumstances under which this movie should be viewed.
The movie begins with Diane Keaton as Bridget and Ted Danson as Don shredding money over the toilet as the FBI masses outside. Keaton escapes out the back, leaving her husband to be arrested. Elsewhere Queen Latifah as Nina burning money, and Katie Holmes as Jackie rigging her trailer to explode. Assuming that this is enough to interest its audience in the story, we then flash back three years.
Bridget is an upper middle class skeleton living in a huge house and giving a simply delightful garden party, wherein she learns that her husband has put their house up for sale. He has lost his job and has been unable to find work. Bridget, quite accustomed to her lifestyle, goes on about how she cannot be without the finer things, and says that she will get a job. She has absolutely no skills, and after a montage of leadenly obnoxious calls to prospective employers, finally settles on a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve bank. We are invited to laugh at how horrible it is for a refined upper-crust woman to clean toilets and floors. I, for one, did not accept the invitation. Afterward Bridget goes to Home Depot, and discusses how much nicer consumer good look when they are on display. The movie is making gestures in the direction of satirizing an addiction to a consumerist lifestyle, but can’t go through with it enough, lest we begin to dislike Bridget. More, of course, than we already do.
I should also mention that when watching Mad Money on an airplane, and pulling out one’s notebook to catch the subtle nuances and record them for later, one must be prepared to stand the incredulous stares of strangers seated next to one as they think “WHY would this guy be taking NOTES on THIS?”
Intercut with our action are strikingly avant-garde flash-forwards to all of the characters being interviewed by the FBI. Those not able to follow such cutting-edge narrative techniques are advised to steer well clear. Anyway, we see that Queen Latifah’s Nina lives in a housing project with her two sons, one of whom brings home a list of weapons he is prohibited from bringing to school. Sign of the times, huh? Crazy world we live in. Also at the bank is Katie Holmes’ Jackie, who goes around all day dancing to music in her headphones as she cleans and empties trash.
Anyway, part of the women’s jobs is shredding old currency that is being taken out of circulation. Bridget gets the idea to take the money, as no one will miss it, and approaches Nina and then Jackie with the idea. Jackie is a bad idea for a partner in crime from the start, evidenced most clearly when she jumps into the crime at once, with a perky “Why not?” Soon enough they’ve completed one round.
Don finds out about it right away, and advises Bridget against doing it again, but they do anyway. Nina says all of them must not spend the money, as that will attract the attention of the law. Regardless, Bridget uses her money to buy a $62,000 diamond ring, despite the fact that we have earlier learned that they are $280,000 in debt and have no insurance. Yes, this is your “likeable” character, who is happy to let her husband work to earn money for her, but goes around buying expensive jewelry for herself when she comes upon a little cash. We are supposed to thrill to the tragedy of her loss when Nina flushes the ring down the toilet. Despite her own advice not to spend the money and draw attention, Nina pays for an entire year for her son at an expensive private school in advance and also indicates she will make a large donation. This action receives not examination, let alone criticism, because of course… well, you know.
SPOILERS > > >
God, I can’t believe I’m still writing about this movie. Anyway, more and more people keep getting drawn in, and eventually some strange guy starts hanging around Bridget’s house and getting a tour of the bank. He interviews the head of security at the bank, who would find the situation very uncomfortable if he were to have found to have failed his job so badly. At one point he says “these are not white-collar people,” indicating that as such they couldn’t be capable of planning such an ingenious scheme. Blow struck for the working class? Well not really, when you realize that it took quite white-collar Bridget to think up the scheme.
So we’re back at the beginning, only this time we get to watch Jackie’s trailer explode. They are indicted, and Jackie confesses on the condition that Latifah’s Nina be granted immunity so she can be around to take care of those two kids! The sentiment itself is not nauseating, but the way the movie is ignorant of the sentimental cliches it embodies—not to mention the way it uses it to deflect attention away from our characters’ other serious moral deficiencies—is. The move ends in a way that requires that none of the characters suffer any consequences for their actions and no one has to do any examination of their characters. Which is how life should be, don’t you think?
< < < SPOILERS END
I honestly can’t imagine the kind of person who would WANT to see this movie, but I do know that I don’t want to know them. I do get a little chuckle out of the fact that we know poor Tom Cruise had to sit through it—one can imagine him gritting his teeth and trying to make nice. The problems are too many to enumerate, but early on I thought that Bridget was quite a surprisingly obnoxious character—and it occurred to me that the movie would have been considerably stronger if she was even MORE obnoxious. If she had been completely venal the movie could have developed a wicked sense of humor that would draw one in [a la The Devil Wears Prada] and—well, it would still suck, but at least it wouldn’t be like a two hour-old bowl of Cream of Wheat.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you have four operational brain cells, that’s three more than anyone who needs to watch this.
