Mad Money (film)

Mad Money is a 2008 American comedy-crime film starring Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes, and directed by Callie Khouri. It is loosely based on the 2001 British film Hot Money.

Mad Money
Theatrical release poster
Directed byCallie Khouri
Produced byJay Cohen
Frank DeMartini
Written byGlenn Gers
StarringDiane Keaton
Queen Latifah
Katie Holmes
Ted Danson
Stephen Root
Christopher McDonald
Adam Rothenberg
Roger Cross
Music byJames Newton Howard
Marty Davich
CinematographyJohn Bailey
Edited byWendy Greene Bricmont
Production
company
  • Millennium Films[1]
  • Lightspeed Media[1]
  • Swingin' Productions[1]
  • Big City Pictures[1]
  • Granada Productions[1]
  • MMoney[1]
  • Grand Army Entertainment[1]
Distributed byOverture Films[1]
Release date
  • January 18, 2008 (2008-01-18)
Running time
104 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$22 million[2]
Box office$26.4 million[3]

Plot

The film begins in medias res, with the suspects getting caught and being interrogated. Then it flashes back to three years earlier and the film continues forward from there, interspersed with occasional bits from the interrogation.

Three years before getting caught, Bridget Cardigan (Diane Keaton) lived a comfortable upper middle class life until her husband Don Cardigan (Ted Danson) was "downsized" from his position and sank into debt. The paycheck for Selina, the housecleaner, bounces again. Selina confronts Bridget and suggests she take a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

On her first day on the job, Bridget hatches a scheme to steal worn-out dollar bills slated for destruction. For her team she chooses Nina (Queen Latifah), who works the dollar bill shredder, and Jackie (Katie Holmes), who takes bill carts from the Secret Service room to the shredding room. It takes some work to persuade Nina to join, but Jackie joins them quickly.

The plan is that in the Secret Service room Bridget will switch a cart's official Master-brand lock with a near identical lock she purchased at Home Depot. Bridget will tell Jackie the cart number and give Nina the official lock. When Jackie gets the chosen cart, she dumps some bills from the cart into a trash can before taking the cart to Nina, who then uses Bridget's key to open it and restores the official lock, and then proceeds to shred the remaining bills. Meanwhile, Bridget, in the course of her janitorial duties, retrieves the dumped bills from the trash and splits them among Nina and Jackie in the women's restroom.

Their first robbery is a success though the take is not as big as they had hoped. However, they're emboldened to do it repeatedly. Once Don and Bridget pay off their debt, Don suggests they stop before they get caught. Bridget rejects this idea and persuades Nina and Jackie to keep going. They almost get caught but they end up cutting in Barry (Roger Cross), one of the security guards, who is attracted to Nina.

A Federal Bank Examiner shows up at a party at Bridget's house, and the next day Bridget sees him at work. The Examiner confronts Glover (Stephen Root), who is unwilling as a matter of professional pride to admit anyone has stolen a single bill out of his bank. Tipped off, that night Bridget and her accomplices begin trying to get rid of all the loot stashed in their houses, but the cops move in before all the evidence is destroyed. Bridget escapes but the others get caught.

Bridget hires a tax attorney to defend them. The lawyer gets Bridget and all her accomplices off the hook for their crimes, because neither the law enforcement, nor the examiner can prove that the large stash of cash in their homes came from the Federal Reserve Bank. Technically, it isn't illegal to have a couple of hundred thousand dollars in cash lying around inside a private residence. However, they spent a large sum of that stolen cash to buy expensive objects and improvements on their houses, and did not pay the taxes for them because they couldn't justify the income. The IRS demands they pay their taxes, which turn out to be equal in amount to the money that still remains.

Eight months later, Bridget reveals to Nina and Jackie that she had stashed away much of the stolen money in the basement of a friend's bar.

Cast

Original UK version

The original UK version produced by Granada Television, Hot Money (2001), tells the story of three women, Bridget, Liz and Jackie, who embarked on a plan to steal thousands of pounds of banknotes that were due to be destroyed at the Bank of England's incinerating plant in Essex. It was a fictionalised account of the Loughton incinerator thefts.[4]

Release

Mad Money was released on DVD May 13, 2008. In the DVD director's commentary, director Callie Khouri credits producer Jay Cohen as having brought her the British film he had obtained rights to be called Hot Money.

Hot Money is based on the true story of a group of women who worked at the Bank of England and, over an unknown period, removed an unknown amount of money that was supposed to be destroyed. No one except these women know the exact details of the theft. Callie Khouri and Jay Cohen worked 5 years to bring a deliberately Americanized version of Hot Money to the screen as Mad Money using various writers. Both Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah were attached early on to the project and writers began designing the characters specifically around the two actresses.

Reception

Box office

The film debuted in fifth place at the box office on its opening day in the United States, with a return of US$2.3 million from 2,470 screens.[5][6] Reuters referred to this return as a "modest" result for the film's opening day.[7] By the end of its opening weekend, Mad Money had slipped to seventh place, with a weekend take of $7.7 million.[8][9] Writing for Rotten Tomatoes, Gitesh Pandya noted that the opening weekend per theater revenue "averaged a not-so-impressive $3,126."[10] amNewYork called the film's opening weekend return "a big flop at the box office," and the New Zealand Herald described it as "a box-office flop".[11][12] Richard Johnson of the New York Post wrote that the movie "bombed, debuting at an abysmal seventh place on the box-office charts."[13] The film's four-day take was a dismal $9.2 million.[11][14] The film also did not fare well in its release in other countries, and Conor Bresnan of Box Office Mojo reported that "Mad Money bombed in its first two markets" overseas.[15] With an estimated budget of $22 million,[16] the film had broken even by the time it came off theaters.[3]

Critical reception

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 22% of 105 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 4.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A laborious, unfunny and implausible heist film."[17] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 41 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[18]

Roger Ebert gave the film a rating of one and a half stars, and wrote, "The bottom line is, some girls will like it, the men not so much."[19] The film also received one and a half stars in a review in the Chicago Tribune, and Michael Phillips wrote that the film's cast was not to blame: "Do not blame the cast. The cast is game. The dreary visual scheme, however, combines unwell with the pokey, enervated rhythm of the heist scenes, and while I'm neither a medical doctor nor a script doctor, it seems this film could use a few uppers."[20]

The film received three stars in Newsday, and Jan Stuart wrote "Mad Money is no Rififi, but Khouri and Gers invest it with an individuality and generosity of spirit that lift it into the realm of guiltless pleasure."[21] Bill Wine of All Headline News gave the film two and a half stars, writing "Mad Money is a light and lively, likable low-tech lark. Don't expect big laughs, but you can at least bank on it to hold your interest."[22] The Canadian Press gave the film one and a half stars, and criticized Katie Holmes's performance "While Keaton has long done zany and giddy well, and she and Latifah have an interesting contrast of personalities, Holmes' presence feels like an afterthought."[23] The New York Post, The New York Times and Variety also criticized Katie Holmes's performance in the film, and The New York Times called Holmes "the movie's weakest link."[24][25]

In an article in the Boston Herald titled "Don't waste your Mad Money on poor comedy", Stephen Schaefer gave the film a rating of "C", writing "Even with the legendary Diane Keaton center stage, Mad Money fails to hit the stratosphere of giddy, intoxicating comedy."[26] The film received a critical review in from Claudia Puig in USA Today "This lifeless comedy and uninventive caper feels as if it were cobbled together at a studio's obligatory consciousness-raising diversity seminar."[27]

The film scored a third place in the New York Post's Top 10 Worst Movies of 2008 overview.[28]

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References
  1. "Mad Money". American Film Institute. Retrieved January 16, 2017.
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-06-07. Retrieved 2009-07-20.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. "Mad Money". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved 2018-03-22.
  4. "http://www.ucc.ie/en/lawsite/lawonline/". External link in |title= (help)
  5. Staff (January 19, 2008). "Cloverfield Destroying January Records". Comingsoon.net. Coming Soon Media, L.P. Retrieved 2008-01-19.
  6. D'Alessandro, Anthony (January 19, 2008). "'Cloverfield' swarms box office: Par's sci-fier nets $16.8 million". Variety. Reed Business Information. Retrieved 2008-01-19.
  7. Goodman, Dean; Editing by Vicki Allen (January 19, 2008). "Monster thriller "Cloverfield" crushes box office". Reuters. Retrieved 2008-01-19.
  8. Germain, David (January 20, 2008). "'Cloverfield' Pulls Down Monster $41M". Associated Press. Archived from the original on January 23, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
  9. Goodman, Dean (January 20, 2008). ""Cloverfield" a monster at box office". Reuters. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
  10. Pandya, Gitesh (January 20, 2008). "Box Office Guru Wrapup: Cloverfield Crushes Records at #1: 'Twas a monster mash at the box office". Rotten Tomatoes. IGN Entertainment, Inc. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
  11. McNaughton, Maggie (January 28, 2008). "In the women's mags: Katie is thriving on broccoli - but it isn't helping career". New Zealand Herald. APN Holdings NZ Limited. Retrieved 2008-01-27.
  12. Miller, Korin (amNewYork Arts & Entertainment Editor); Kara Warner; Special to amNewYork (January 21, 2008). "Paris Hilton, Jessica Alba share too much at Sundance". amNewYork. am New York. Archived from the original on October 10, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
  13. Johnson, Richard (January 23, 2008). "Cold Run". New York Post. pp. Page Six. Archived from the original on 2009-01-11. Retrieved 2008-01-23.
  14. Gray, Brandon (January 21, 2008). "'Cloverfield' Clobbers MLK Record". Box Office Mojo. Box Office Mojo, LLC. Retrieved 2008-01-23.
  15. Bresnan, Conor (January 25, 2008). "Around the World Roundup: 'Legend' First for Fifth Weekend". Box Office Mojo. Box Office Mojo, LLC. Retrieved 2008-01-30.
  16. "Mad Money: Box Office". IMDb. Amazon. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
  17. "Mad Money (2008)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 2018-03-22.
  18. "Mad Money Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2014-08-25.
  19. Ebert, Roger (January 17, 2008). "Little to love about 'Mad Money'". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2011-03-20.
  20. Phillips, Michael (January 17, 2008). "Movie Review: 'Mad Money' (starring Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes) -- 1½ stars - Cast is on the 'Money,' not so the 1-joke script". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on January 29, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  21. Stuart, Jan (January 18, 2008). "Movie review: 'Mad Money'". Newsday. Archived from the original on July 3, 2007. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  22. Wine, Bill (Celebrity News Service Movie Critic) (January 17, 2008). "Mad Money ( **1/2 )". All Headline News. Archived from the original on December 10, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  23. "Caper comedy 'Mad Money' comes up short as a female empowerment movie". The Canadian Press. January 17, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  24. Lu, Anne (Celebrity News Service News Writer) (January 19, 2008). "Critics: Katie Holmes Is Movie's Weakest Link". All Headline News. Archived from the original on January 23, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-19.
  25. Pike, Julie (January 20, 2008). "Katie Holmes Box Office Woes: Mad Money Flops, Report Claims". The National Ledger. Archived from the original on January 31, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-20.
  26. Schaefer, Stephen (January 17, 2008). "Don't waste your 'Mad Money' on poor comedy". Boston Herald. Boston Herald and Herald Media. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  27. Puig, Claudia (January 18, 2008). "'Mad Money' won't buy you laughs". USA Today. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  28. "Today's Ten: Worst Movies Of 2008". NY Post. Archived from the original on December 5, 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-03.
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