Mad Money

Posted on May 12, 2008 at 4:00 pm

What force on earth is strong enough to unite an upper middle class suburban housewife, a poor African-American single mother and a young, spaced-out rock n’ roll fan living in a trailer? Why, the opportunity to steal from the government, of course.
“Mad Money” is a conventional heist comedy about a plot to steal money from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes star as low-level employees of the Bureau who come up with a complicated plan to get around the elaborate security procedures. Working together beneath the notice of government officials, the three women combine their roles to walk off with bags of used money that has been returned to the Bureau to be destroyed. Each of them has a different justification for their decision to steal — a special need or a past injustice that the money will cure.

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Comedy Crime

Because I Said So

Posted on January 30, 2007 at 4:12 pm

I blame “Sex and the City.”

Now everyone thinks that what it takes — or all it takes — for a story about a bunch of women characters to work is non-stop talk about sex and shoes and a complete absence of boundaries. But this film is missing three key elements of “Sex and the City.” First: wit. Second: interesting, distinctive, believable characters and situations. Third: Conversations that are pleasantly racy and edgy between friends are just plain ewwwwwwwwwww when they’re between mothers and daughters.

This movie manages to be offensive and yet dull and predictable, as phony as a Kate Spade sidewalk knock-off bag and as unoriginal as the ready-for VH1 soundtrack. Does it give you an idea if I mention that there are not one, not two, but three intended-to-be-hilarious dropped cakes? And not one of them is actually funny?

With an apparent complete lack of direction and a fingernails-on-blackboard screenplay, all the talented cast can do is race around in a frenzied ditz-fest.

Diane Keaton plays Daphne the supposed-to-be-adorably ditzy, funkily chic, and hopelessly overinvolved mother of three daughters. The older two aren’t important enough for us to care what their names are, but they are played by the should-fire-their-agents-for-this “Gilmore Girls'” Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo. The youngest is Milly (Mandy Moore), also supposed-to-be-adorably-ditzy, who runs a catering service. Her mother says things to her like “Go talk to that guy, but don’t do that thing you do.”

So, what’s an interfering mother to do? The internet is just sitting there, filled with prospective sons-in-law. So, after a brief intended-to-be-humorous interlude in which Daphne gets stuck on a porn site (I hope Gateway didn’t pay for product placement), she posts a “looking for someone for my daughter” ad and soon enough has 17 would-be-suitors lined up for interviews.

And one musician named Johnny (Gabriel Macht) performing in the bar who rescues her from a volunteer therapist who shows up for an impromptu intervention. Daphne thinks she’s found Mr. Right in Jason (Tom Everett Scott), a successful architect. But the musician goes after Milly, too. Soon she’s dating them both. Two problems here: one, there is no reason to believe that Jason would have any interest in Milly, and two, Milly’s failure to be honest with either of them makes her much less sympathetic. Oh, and there’s also a child who enters the picture who makes a lot of only-in-the-movies, intended-to-be-cute-and-funny-but-completely-synthetic comments. But one of these suitors has a handsome dad (Stephen Collins) who makes Daphne think that maybe it’s her own love life she should be fixing. What she should have been fixing is this tedious, unfunny, embarrassing movie, but I’m afraid it’s as beyond repair as those three smashed cakes.

Parents should know that this movie has some crude language and extremely explicit sexual references and situations for a PG-13 movie, including mother-daughters discussions of the pros and cons of thong underwear and circumcised penises, about oral sex and numbers of orgasms. There are some scanty undies, scenes of internet porn (inspiring a dog to hump the furniture), and a brief “humorous” same-sex kiss. Characters do some social drinking and some drinking to deal with stress, loneliness, and nervousness. There is some insensitive racial and ethnic stereotyping and humor involving a possibly suicidal man in counseling that is intended to be humorous but comes across as offensive.

Families who see this movie should talk about how parents know when to step back from their involvement in their children’s lives. And they should talk about how people who care about each other handle the “off days.”

Families who enjoy this movie may enjoy some of the other (and much better) movies about mothers trying to run their daughters’ love lives, including Next Stop Wonderland and For Love or Money. The two wonderful Gary Cooper movies Daphne likes are Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and A Farewell to Arms.

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Comedy Romance

Hanging Up

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:16 am

There are movies where the writer and director focus on the emotions of the characters. Then there are movies like this one where they make the mistake of trying to focus on the emotions of the audience, and you can almost hear them saying, “A party at the Nixon library! And an old guy who tells dirty jokes and who wants to have sex! That will make them laugh! A parent dying! That will make them cry!” But it doesn’t. It doesn’t even earn our sympathy, much less our interest. We never really care about these selfish, charmless, and superficial people. The result is formulaic, inauthentic and manipulative, despite the best efforts of an irresistible cast.

Meg Ryan, Lisa Kudrow, and Diane Keaton (who also directed) play three sisters who try to connect to each other by phone through their father’s last illness. But as the title suggests, they more often disconnect. Meg Ryan plays Eve, the classic middle child, trying desperately to bring everyone together but stressed out and resentful because her sisters are not helping her. Diane Keaton is Georgia, a sort of cross between Martha Stewart and Tina Brown. Lisa Kudrow is Maddy, a soap actress still hoping for her sisters’ approval.

Sometimes the loss of someone we love is not as painful as the loss of our hope for what that relationship could have been. The three sisters have to understand that their parents are never going to be the loving, wise, supportive people they want them to be, but that they find that elsewhere, even in each other. In the movie’s best scene, Eve meets with Ogmed Kunundar (Ann Bortolotti), the mother of the doctor whose car she has crashed into. Ogmed is just the loving, wise, and supportive mother of everyone’s dreams, and she salutes Eve for her bravery and her grief. She shows Eve the gifts that she did get from her father and gives her permission to “disconnect.” That scene just shows us that it is a real shame that that this isn’t a good movie. It tries to deal with issues that deserve better.

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Drama Family Issues