| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Latifah coasts on grit and verve, and Holmes has a goggle-eyed sweetness, but it's Keaton who rules.
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| 63 |
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Moviegoers will come up empty with Mad Money. This lifeless comedy and uninventive caper feels as if it were cobbled together at a studio's obligatory consciousness-raising diversity seminar.
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| 63 |
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
This is the feistiest Hollywood movie about American women and their thankless jobs since "9 to 5."
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| 60 |
Village Voice
Robert Wilonsky
While it's all so breezy and zippy and girl-power peppy, it's Keaton who makes Mad Money worth a few bucks.
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| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
The results are moderately entertaining, but the humor is broad and shallow; the film has none of the irony, bite or wit of its predecessor; and the script (by Glenn Gers) seems so calculated to appeal to every conceivable female demographic that it always feels contrived.
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| 58 |
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
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.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A caper comedy with some definite problems.
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| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
Keaton and Ted Danson, who plays her husband, Don, are the comedic bright spot in the movie, not least because they are ridiculous.
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| 50 |
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
If you're going to make a heist picture, then at least have the decency to make the heist itself interesting. Otherwise, do like Tarantino did in "Reservoir Dogs" and just skip it altogether.
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| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
A likable and completely dispensable heist film starring two of the deftest comedians working (Keaton and Latifah), the film from Callie Khouri is itself an American retread of the British caper telefilm "Hot Money."
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| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
Josh Rosenblatt
Move over, Gordon Gecko: The new poster boy for American greed in the movies isn’t a silver-tongued corporate hustler with pomaded hair and a closet full of $10,000 suits. In fact, the new poster boy for American greed in the movies isn’t a boy at all. I know you won’t believe me when I tell you, but you’ve been replaced by Diane Keaton.
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| 50 |
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Everyone in the cast treads water, acting-wise -- there's nothing else to do -- except for Latifah, who brings passion to her work.
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| 50 |
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Mad Money is a comedy caper where the caper's not interesting and the comedy's not funny.
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| 50 |
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Once the star of some of the finest movies of the '70s and '80s, Keaton has begun making just this kind of chick-flick comedy with increasing regularity at least since 1996's "The First Wives Club," and it's gotten so she's not even trying to get into character anymore.
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| 50 |
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
In the breezy, amoral heist comedy Mad Money, “Fun With Dick and Jane” meets “9 to 5” on the way to recession.
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| 50 |
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Possesses its share of modest laughs, many of them delivered by Ted Danson as Bridget's bemused husband. But director Callie Khouri (best known for writing "Thelma & Louise") doesn't bring the dash needed to make this a comic heist on a par with "Ocean's Eleven."
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| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
The pocketing of tired bills headed for the shredder, the producing of tired movies headed for the theatre -- it's all just recycling.
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| 42 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
As a comedy, it relies on Keaton and Latifah playing the same characters they always play, and Holmes overcompensating by switching into bug-eyed manic-comedienne mode. Her performance is part Lucille Ball, part overcaffeinated chicken, and it deserves some credit for daring, but none for execution.
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| 42 |
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
The movie is not so much horrible as it is drab -- from its lazy plotting to its uninspired yuks to its cop-out ending to its relentlessly yellow-brown sets. "Mad Money" does little more than take up space, and you will be two hours closer to the grave when you leave the theater.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
The picture has no legs, no style, no sense of movement other than the meandering, dawdling kind.
|
| 40 |
Film Threat
Felix Vasques Jr.
The best way to describe Callie Khouri’s Mad Money is as “Ocean’s Eleven” if it were geared to the drones at the Oprah Winfrey book club.
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| 40 |
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
If the movie gets by, as it surely will during the current entertainment drought, most of the credit should go to a couple of performers (Latifah/Keaton) who come from different traditions, yet share a gift for breathing life into moribund material.
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| 40 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Improbable and generally unfunny comedy.
|
| 40 |
Variety
Justin Chang
Banking on the appealing chemistry of Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah -- with co-star Katie Holmes awkwardly upsetting the balance -- this strained heist comedy about three cash-strapped femmes is watchable enough for a few reels, but lacks the requisite wit and amoral energy to capitalize on its get-rich-quick premise.
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| 38 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Diane Keaton--now there’s a trouper for you. She will not be caught giving less than 110 percent, even in a drab little heist comedy.
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| 38 |
Premiere
Deborah Day
Affable Ted Danson makes few ripples as Bridget's husband Don; while Roger Cross and Adam Rothenberg also glide through the film in their minor "significant other" roles to Nina and Jackie, respectively.
|
| 38 |
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Why would so many accomplished women waste their time and talents on a movie as counterfeit as Mad Money?
|
| 38 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Mad Money is astonishingly casual for a movie about three service workers who steal millions from a Federal Reserve Bank. There is little suspense, no true danger; their plan is simple, the complications are few, and they don't get excited much beyond some high-fives and hugs and giggles.
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| 33 |
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
The best thing you can say about Mad Money is that it has a good cast. The worst thing you can say about it is that the cast is extremely ill-used.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
This lame comedy was adapted from a recent British TV movie, though its (quite literal) money shots of the women squealing and hurling cash in the air reminded me of 80s greed capers like "Trading Places" and "A Fish Called Wanda."
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| 25 |
New York Post
Kyle Smith
Holmes, with Alice Cooper hair and crazy Jim Carrey eyes, looks terrible and acts worse, unless this movie is unintentionally a lobotomy documentary. Whatever could have happened to her in the last couple of years to zap the talent out of her like this?
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