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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Mad Money

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 31 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 13 votes
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Crime | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Terry Winsor (screenplay "Hot Money")
Neil McKay (screenplay "Hot Money")
John Mister (earlier screenplay)
Glenn Gers
Directed by: Callie Khouri
Release Date:
Theatrical: January 18, 2008
DVD: May 13, 2008
Running Time: minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for sexual material and language, and brief drug references
Starring Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, and Ted Danson
Bridget Cardigan is forced to get a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank after her corporate husband is downsized from his job. The one-time suburban mom soon discovers she has more in common with her new co-workers than she thought. She forges an unexpected bond with Nina, a hard-working single mom with two kids, and Jackie, an exuberant free spirit with nothing to lose. Caught up in a system that underestimates their talents and keeps their dreams just out of reach, Bridget, Nina and Jackie set out to even the score. After a lifetime of playing by the rules, the three devise a plan to smuggle soon-to-be destroyed currency out of the supposedly airtight Reserve. As the unlikely crime syndicate amasses piles of cash, it looks like they have pulled off the perfect crime—until a minor misstep alerts the authorities. With more money than they know what to do with, the women are pushed to the limits of their ingenuity to stay one step ahead of the law. (Overture Films)
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Latifah coasts on grit and verve, and Holmes has a goggle-eyed sweetness, but it's Keaton who rules.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
This is the feistiest Hollywood movie about American women and their thankless jobs since "9 to 5."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Mad Money is a comedy caper where the caper's not interesting and the comedy's not funny.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The picture has no legs, no style, no sense of movement other than the meandering, dawdling kind.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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?
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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?
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Lili S. gave it a0:
Awful is a compliment for this movie!
