Dolla, dolla bill y'all

A breezy and enjoyable movie, "Mad Money" aspires to nothing more and nothing less. It's the kind of thing you'd find yourself surprisingly getting into on a lazy Sunday afternoon. You'll laugh a bit more than you expected and find the plot is more compelling than you might have assumed. In short, it's less predictable than most movies that end up on constant rotation on TBS, even though that will probably be its fate. \nHoping to aid her recently fired husband, middle-class homemaker Bridget Cardigan (Diane Keaton) gets a job for the first time in decades. With her degree in comparative literature, she is handed the only career she is qualified for -- a janitor. The catch is that she's scrubbing toilets at a Federal Reserve Bank. She is overwhelmed with debt and by the amount of money she sees go to waste, as the bank recycles an average of $1 million a day. \nBridget thus devises a plan to strategically rob the bank. She recruits two other janitors, as played by Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes. As unlikely as this felonious trio might seem, some of the best parts of the movie involve their dynamic. While Keaton plays her usual neurotically hilarious self and Latifah is the queen of sass, it's Holmes' ditsy character that stands out. Actually, it's nice just to see her escape Tom Cruise's Scientology sphere, as her last role was in 2005's "Thank You For Smoking." \nThe presence of Callie Khouri, who has written films such as "Thelma & Louise" and "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," is probably partly to thank for this film's surprising smarts. "Mad Money" is not just a chick flick that empowers women over men. Naturally, our robber protagonists eventually get greedy with their money, which is why they catch the attention of government taxmen. \nThey don't face the same fate as Bonnie and Clyde or Martha Stewart, however. Let's just say Bridget's neurosis prevails in the end.