AND the cinematic comeback of the year award goes to . . . someone other than Katie Holmes, whose comedy “Mad Money” is the most cringe-making return since “Love Boat: The Next Wave.”
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?
She, Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah play the cleanup crew at the Kansas City Federal Reserve, where worn-out money is fed into shredders.
Apparently the whole operation is guarded by a $4 lock, and all three women are allowed to wheel carts piled with bales of money with no more surveillance than the kind Duane Reade uses to scrutinize the Listerine shelf.
Keaton’s wealthy husband (a gray Ted Danson) has been laid off, leaving the pair $286,000 in debt. Her degree is in Comp Lit, so naturally the only job open to her is cleaning toilets at the Fed. (Applying for a white-collar position, she says, “A drug test? What kind of drugs would I have to take?”)
As for her husband, what was his job? How did he lose all that money? The script can’t bother with details or character because it’s in a hurry to deliver broken wordplay like this: “I’m no longer the breadwinner. I don’t bring home the bacon. I produce no green.” Er, green doesn’t fit, not that the line would be any funnier if it were, “I’m not earning any lettuce.”
Latifah, a single mom who needs money to get her son out of his grim public school, helps Keaton forge a plan to steal the currency that’s slated to be destroyed anyway, so it won’t be missed, and sneak it out of the building in their underwear. “I’ll bet Victoria never had this particular secret,” says Latifah, stuffing her bra.
Holmes, meant to be the ditzy young thing they bring onboard because no one will suspect her, is inept at comedy, and the closest we get to wit is a clip of Jim Cramer’s CNBC show. It’s also called “Mad Money,” – does that give you the giggles?
As the vastly improbable plot plays out and an ain’t-this-funny score claws at your eardrums, director Callie Khouri, the formerly acclaimed screenwriter of “Thelma and Louise,” achieves a level of overall drabness suggesting Saturday afternoon at your local Wal-Mart, in whose $2.99 bins you will soon be finding the DVD of this movie.
MAD MONEY
Bad movie.
Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sexual references, profanity, drug references). At the 84th Street, the Magic Johnson, the Kips Bay, others.