Have
you ever concocted a get-rich-quick scheme with a friend, feeling unsure if
you’d get away with it? Tossed up dollars bills with an unrelenting fear that
only a white-collar crime could produce? Lied and cheated the system like your
life depended on it, because in reality, it did?
Then
you’ll enjoy Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, Ted Danson and Diane Keaton in
another get-rich-or-cry-trying tale called Mad
Money, due to release in theatres this Friday (January 18).
As
you can imagine, Mad Money is all about the Benjamin’s. What
makes this a different story of dollar bills is that it centers on the real
state of currency – how it’s shredded and disposed. For most of us that
desperately need those dollars, this realization makes for interesting cinema.
Middle-aged
and financially busted, Bridget Cardigan, (played by Diane
Keaton) is an ex-high society dweller. After her husband (Ted Danson) loses his
executive position, she’s motivated to find employment. Despairingly, she accepts
the only job available, as a janitor at the Federal
Reserve Bank in Kansas City. Surrounded by billions of dollars, she
dreams of regaining her status as privileged, if only someone would discover
her talents; of thievery and deception, of course.
Months
into her first paying gig in years, someone does; a quirky music-lover without
a care in the world (Katie Holmes) and a celibate mother of two who lives only
for her children (Queen Latifah). These three women cut a deal and put a plan
worth millions into place.
Suddenly,
life is fine in this hilarious and suspenseful comedy; money makes them happy
and the high that crime provides gets the best of them and their better halves.
But it’s not long before greed surfaces, and the trio realizes that the color
green is not only the shade on the bills.
Caught
between the money and the madness, between the dollars and the deals, the trio
fight for their freedom; enduring materialistic and cardinal desires while
keeping their boasting secrets hidden. Thankfully, Bridget has stronger desires
of her own, especially after bonding with women that she normally would’ve
never met, let alone befriended.
Essentially,
this is about friendship and the things that you’re willing to do to keep that
friendship alive and free. Want and need long for their freedom; whether lying
dormant in a woman who hasn’t felt a man in seven years, or forever present in
a woman who has experienced privilege most of her life. These two traits of
human nature make Mad Money
hilariously contagious, yet foolishly irrational.
If
you were around millions of dollars on a daily basis that wasn’t yours, would
you act on that want and that need? Would you plan to lie, cheat and steal?
Would you befriend someone that you had nothing in common with to help this
plan move forward? Would you, then, give it all up to keep the friendship?
After seeing Mad Money, I think I
would. Thankfully, I wouldn’t be alone.
