Queen Latifah and Roger R. Cross in Mad Money

Despite trio of stars, bank caper just coasts

There is a certain level of basic competence at work in "Mad Money" -- nothing special, nothing too awfully bad. The comic story of three women ripping off a Federal Reserve bank in Kansas City just sort of ..... is.

There are some touching moments and some funny ones. Queen Latifah is quite good, as is Diane Keaton, and Katie Holmes is in there, plugging away. But it's all in service to a workaday script that leads to a cop-out of an ending that makes the whole thing seem even more generic than it should.

Keaton stars as Bridget Cardigan, whose husband Don (Ted Danson) has been downsized, imperiling their more-than-comfortable lifestyle. Desperate for work but not particularly qualified to do anything (she was a comparative literature major in college), Bridget takes a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve bank.

Despite a smokescreen of bluster from the boss (the always welcome Stephen Root) and some serious security, it takes Bridget about five minutes to figure out a way to rob the place of cash that's scheduled to be shredded. But she needs help, so she enlists the assistance of Nina (Latifah) and Jackie (Holmes), and before long they're funneling so much money out of the place that they have to remind each other not to spend too much of it, to avoid suspicion.

Latifah does the best with her role, a single mother willing to take chances to improve her family's lot in life. But Danson also deserves recognition. He lately has perfected a certain type of character, knocked down by life but not bowed by it.

Keaton's goofiness is a little out of place, but she gets more interesting as Bridget gets greedier. And while it's easy to make a target out of Holmes, best known as Mrs. Tom Cruise, she has a thankless role. Jackie is a nitwit, though her ignorance and naivete seem to come and go as the script dictates.

There are occasional feints toward relevance, in particular the empowerment of women and the corporate culture that claims so many dreams. Director Callie Khouri is familiar with such topics -- she won an Oscar for writing "Thelma & Louise." But Glenn Gers' script doesn't spend much time on deep thinking. Instead, the film is content coasting along from one easy resolution of problems to another.

Not every film has to tackle social commentary. But not cashing in quite so easily would have gone a long way toward making "Mad Money" a better movie.

- By Bill Goodykoontz / The Arizona Republic

Mad Money

Cast: Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Homes, Ted Danson.
Running time: 104 minutes.
Rating: PG-13; sexual material and language, and brief drug references.