No One Has Beat the System in a Hundred Years

Ever since his infamous couch jumping episode incident, not only has Tom Cruise’s films underperformed but it has also had a negative affect the reason for the jumping, his wife Katie Holmes. Granted you can argue her lack of being able to put people in theater seats well predates her meeting her husband. First Daughter anyone? Not surprisingly her latest outing tanked at the box office debuting at a meager seventh place.

That is not to say Mad Money (not to be confused with the Jim Cramer television show, which actually makes an appearance) is at all unwatchable. Holmes plays third banana to Diane Keaton (Father of the Bride) who is forced to get a job cleaning toilets at the Federal Reserve Bank when her husband gets fired. There she comes up with a plan to get back to living the upper class lifestyle she is used to by recycling the old and worn money about to be shredded for her own personal use.

As the person actually doing the shredding, Queen Latifah (Bringing Down The House) if the first person she recruits with Holmes entering the fold later. Not to pile on Holmes, but she is the weak link in the trio as the flaky, free spirited character seemed to be more fitted for someone younger and with actual comedic timing.

The movie really shines with its supporting cast. First there is Stephan Root as head of the bank playing a more serious Jimmy James. Ted Danson (Getting Even With Dad) gets plenty of laughs as Keaton’s now unemployed husband. Finesse Mitchell, who Saturday Night Live should bring back to play Barak Obama, gets the most laughs as the guard that hits on every woman that goes through the metal detector. And even my big brother Shooter McGavin makes a way too short appearance.

Unfortunately the movie starts off in the third act, one of my least favorite plot devises, with the main players being arrested before flashing back. But how they pull off the caper still is entertaining despite the miscast Holmes. Still they should have gotten caught well sooner than it happened because the movie ends up going about twenty minutes too long where you just think to yourself, go ahead and caught already.

Mad Money gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.