Ever hear of this show called Weeds about a suburban soccer mom that deals pot to maintain her upper middle class lifestyle after the untimely death of her husband? Well, it’s pretty funny despite the one fundamental flaw I find in the series’ ethics; that one probably shouldn’t turn to a life of crime to maintain a lifestyle of avarice when downscaling several notches would probably have been the preferable option. A similar flaw is apparent in Mad Money, a bank heist movie that makes Ocean’s 11 look plausible in its execution.

So three ladies work in the federal reserve: Bridget (Diane Keaton), an upper-class housewife struggling to keep the big house after her company man husband (Ted Danson) loses his job; Nina (Queen Latifah), a single mom trying to give her kids a better life; and Jackie (Katie Holmes), a ditz who lives in a trailer with her bum husband. Bridget is the ring leader and comes up with a plan to rip off the reserve of money taken out of circulation and scheduled for destruction. Their plan works too well and they succeed, but then Bridget gets too greedy and pushes the ladies to steal more and more, only to have the authorities begin to clue in.

I guess the reason I’m holding Weeds in higher esteem is because that pot mom Nancy Botwin often finds herself in over her head dealing with dealers, suppliers and the intricacies of having to hide the way she makes money. Mad Money, to the contrary, says, “Hey, if they’re throwing it in the trash, it’s not really stealing.” No consequences in a situation compounded by the fact that it can’t possibly be that easy to rip off a Federal institution on a daily basis for months and years, but hey these guys make it look so easy. Guard finds out: cut him in. Investigator gets suspicious: keeps stealing so that he doesn’t notice a change in your routine.

And what does Diane Keaton think she’s doing? She used to be a respected actress but this is the latest in a line of movies where a woman of her experience and talent shouldn’t be caught dead in. And remember when Kevin Williamson once said that Katie Holmes had an Oscar in her future and then she ended up sequestered as Mrs. Tom Cruise for a year while former Dawson’s co-star Michelle Williams got the nod?

Queen Latifah manages to keep her dignity, maybe because her character is the only one with truly altruistic intensions. Ted Denson though is utterly hysterical as Bridget’s suffering husband, he’s the only one who seems to get the extent of the criminality. Also good in a small and thankless role is Roger Cross (24’s “Black Jack” Curtis Manning), for whom I hope this leads to bigger and much better things, this guy has leading man material written all over him.

Aside from being a mostly unfunny comedy with dubious moral and ethical implications, Mad Money is also bizarrely structured. It starts off with the crew getting rid of the evidence before the cops roll in for the arrest and then shows the various characters in custody as they tell the story in flashback. It’s a little like saying Verbal’s Keyser Soze, now here’s the search for Keyser Soze. Or failing that, kicking off The Sixth Sense by showing that Bruce Willis is a ghost and then showing him get shot by skinny Donnie Wahlberg.

I realize there’s an artistic methodology here; J.J. Abrams has done it numerous times with Alias, Lost and Mission: Impossible III. But the trick is that you’ve got to leave something to the imagination, and if Mad Money were anymore obvious, they would have handed out copies of the script to follow along.

Still though, it bugs me: the main plot with the stealing for the purpose of remodelling the bathroom and maintaining an unattainable lifestyle to maintain one’s social status. Given present economic conditions in the US it seems a pretty crappy message that it’s an acceptable final solution to steal to achieve your dreams and collect all the stuff you really don’t nee in the first. When the man said “land of opportunity” he didn’t imply one should get there by any means necessary.