Mad Money

Screenwriter Glenn Gers has Americanized with considerable finesse a British TV movie about three cleaning ladies who clean out their employer.

Mad Money is a pretty ho-hum buddy/caper flick which benefits from non-linear story-telling and good turns by its supporting cast.

Mad Money, a sisters-in-greed heist comedy that's like Fun With Dick and Jane crossed with Set It Off.

Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah stick close to their recent, reliable screen personas, while Katie Holmes steals the picture in the broadest comic role.

This is the feistiest Hollywood movie about American women and their thankless jobs since 9 to 5.

The comedy Mad Money makes an argument generally missing from civics courses: Grand theft is a worthy socioeconomic pursuit.

Not as venal -- or as ingenious -- as Showtime's pot- dealing dramedy Weeds, Mad Money nevertheless also leaves one pondering the ways audiences abet amorality tales.

Mad Money is a heist comedy that doesn't rip off the audience. Although it's rough around the edges, Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes keep the mood lighthearted and quirky.

Mad Money is the movie equivalent of finding a $10 bill on the street. It's not enough to change your life, but it's enough to brighten your day.

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.

Mad Money might not be the worst way to spend your time or moolah, but other current releases will give you more bang for your bucks.

Diane Keaton has toned down several notches from her rather embarrassing performance in last year's Because I Said So.

A middling comedy that benefits from winning turns by its trio of stars playing likable, sympathetic characters.

There is a certain level of basic competence at work in Mad Money -- nothing special, nothing too awfully bad.

Even with the legendary Diane Keaton center stage, Mad Money fails to hit the stratosphere of giddy, intoxicating comedy.

Mad Money, a genial remake of a British TV movie called Hot Money, is surprising in that it's not nearly as heinous as its advertising campaign would suggest.

Director Callie Khouri, whose previous film was The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, doesn't seem to know the secrets of action filmmaking, as the heist happens slowly over time and isn't particularly clever.

Just another lightweight comedy about women dabbling in the fleeting pleasures of self-indulgence.

As a heist film, it relies on the trio of felonious females besting a system that seems laughably easy to outwit.

Sadly, this is no guilty-pleasure chick flick in the vein of Nine To Five, a fun-to-watch and funny film that also featured three women coming together.

Everyone in the cast treads water, acting-wise -- there's nothing else to do -- except for Queen Latifah, who brings passion to her work.

While being a serviceable, somewhat female-empowering bank-heist comedy, Mad Money doesn’t do much else to distinguish itself.

Mad Money is the first title to be made under a new project to create commercial films for $10 million or less. That would account for its made-for-TV feel.

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.

Mad Money is a crowd-pleaser, but only if you're too easy to please.

The over-the-top, all-female caper comedy fails to make off with many laughs.

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.

To the extent that the film has any value beyond the charms of its principals, it satirizes how women are (mis)treated in the workplace.

The only character who seems the least bit real is Queen Latifah's, although she is also the most sensible of the bunch.

Mad Money is a fast, funny, wildly implausible mess of a movie -- like Ocean's Eleven shot with the giddy chaos of a sale at Macy's.

If director Callie Khouri deserves credit for anything, it's for guiding Diane Keaton to a performance that makes the case for her as a 21st century comic actress.

Once the star of some of the finest movies of the '70s and '80s, Diane Keaton has begun making just this kind of chick-flick comedy with increasing regularity.

This lifeless comedy and uninventive caper feels as if it were cobbled together at a studio's obligatory consciousness-raising diversity seminar.

Mad Money is pure mush, a cutesy-poo caper comedy of the overfamiliar variety -- daffy and feminist if not exactly hilarious and edgy.

Mad Money is astonishingly casual for a movie about three service workers who steal millions from a Federal Reserve Bank.

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.

Why would so many accomplished women waste their time and talents on a movie as counterfeit as Mad Money?

Mad Money may play well with the lead actresses' fan bases, but adds only fluff to their resumes, as well as to that of director Callie Khouri (Thelma & Louise's writer-director), who should know better.

Mad Money is a frustrating experience; you watch DianeKeaton gamely trying to rise above the material, and you wonder why nobody's out there writing something better for her.

Mad Money belongs in the shredder, delivering no comic bounciness, law-breaking glee or the tempting scent of freshly minted cash. Which isn't to say the movie doesn't give off an odor.

Katie Holmes, with Alice Cooper hair and crazy Jim Carrey eyes, looks terrible and acts worse, unless this movie is unintentionally a lobotomy documentary.

Queen Latifah is appealing in a clichéd role, but Diane Keaton overacts and Mrs. Cruise does little but dance around to her ever-present iPod.

Katie Holmes does ditziness, Queen Latifah does brassiness, and Diane Keaton does Keaton-esque wackiness, all in service of a crime comedy that barely bothers with humor.

Mad Money is an early front-runner for worst film of the year and a deafening argument for audiences staying away in droves -- until March, at the very least.