Mad Money (2008)

Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes, and Queen Latifah headline director Callie Khouri's (DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD) second feature film. Nina (Latifah) and Jackie (Holmes) are two of many employees with mundane jobs at the high-security Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. Their lives change forever when career mom Bridget (Diane Keaton) takes a job there as a cleaning woman after learning that she and her downsized husband, Don (Ted Danson), are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Being surrounded by stacks and stacks of money is too much for Bridget to bear, and she corrals Nina and Jackie into taking the biggest risk of their lives: sneaking out of the bank money that is removed from circulation and about to be shredded. Amazingly, their scheme works, and soon the three are fast friends and the cash is piling up. But will they ever have enough "mad money," or will greed be their downfall?

The fun here is in how three average women pull off a remarkably low-tech scam in the midst of super-high security levels, hidden cameras, and constant monitoring. Keaton, Latifah, and Holmes make a nice team, playing very different women with very different needs. Keaton's Bridget is trying to maintain her family's comfortable, upper-middle-class lifestyle when her husband no longer can. Meanwhile, the sole concern of Latifah's single mom, Nina, is keeping her sons out of trouble despite their surroundings. And Holmes's Jackie is a one-of-a-kind free spirit, dancing to the beat of her own drummer. Danson has some of the film's best lines as he tries to put his wife's actions into perspective.