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Agonizingly slow, this wannabe caper leaves viewers pining for the 103 lost minutes of their lives, and leaves them wondering who abducted Katie Holmes’ talent.

The more buzz about a film, the crappier that movie will be. It’s a shame, really. I mean, Hollywood spends millions promoting movies that just plain suck.

Take Mad Money. The theatrical trailer made it look like a laugh-a-minute amateur criminal adventure where normal people get pushed just enough to delve just beneath the surface of crime. But within the first few weeks of the film’s release, I truly began to wonder if this was just another Tinsel Town flop disguised as an ingenious flick with great actors like Ted Danson, Queen Latifah and Diane Keaton. No, it wasn’t the lackluster reviews I caught here and there on entertainment TV or online. It was the intensity with which all the actors promoted the film on the early morning talk shows. I practically saw the entire movie in clips from interviews with Keaton, Q.L., and Mrs. Tom Cruise.

Any time they show you what appears to be the entire movie, you know it’s a dud.

But when I got the Mad Money DVD to review, I decided to give it a shot. I am human, after all. I could have misread the signs. Besides, some of my favorite actors are in the movie.

Keaton plays a desperate housewife who is about to lose everything – including her home – because her husband lost his job. She gets a job as a janitor at the U.S. Mint, where she discovers that old bills are shredded every day. What’s a few missing and unaccounted for bills? she thinks. She makes a plan, and gets two of her coworkers (Queen Latifah and Holmes) to help. Everything goes great – until things start to go wrong, of course. Will they get away with it? You have to wait nearly an hour and a half to find out.

It took 30 minutes for the three main characters to FINALLY get together for the plan – way too long. The story is told by starting at the beginning of the end, then taking viewers back several months to when the plan was hatched. This does not work for this film. This style was much too slow and certainly was not as written as well as The Usual Suspects to keep viewers interested. Mad Money should have been told from beginning to end, straight through, no deviation. Tension should have been at a maximum level at all times – like the modern take on the caper film The Italian Job. Instead, if floundered – badly – or was not present at all.

And what was up with Katie Holmes? Somehow, this alternative film actress with such incredible potential has become Tinsel Town’s Stepford actress. She lacked the charming natural charisma I’ve seen in previous films – and it showed as the better half of TomKat tried to keep up with Big Screen veterans Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah. It seemed the only thing Holmes could do throughout Mad Money was widen her eyes to not very comical proportions. All. The. Time. Her actions were not natural - fluid. They were robotic, mechanical to the point of annoyance. And did anyone notice her skeletal hands? They looked like the hands of a woman twice her age. Gain some weight, girl! (Note to Katie – Ditch the Tom, get your groove back and knock ‘em dead once again. Scientology and it’s top recruiter are frying your brain and acting ability.)

The DVD extras are few and are NOT worth your time. The behind the scenes look was so boring, I felt like I was in the middle of the Ferris Buehler class with Ben Stein. Seriously. If I have trouble falling asleep tonight, I know what to do.

Mad Money is not the “ingenious crime caper with three winning performances” as promised by Entertainment Weekly, nor is it the “mad fun” promised by Parade Magazine. It is a sluggishly dull waste of time. Don’t bother to rent. Spent your cash on something more worthy – like recycled bubblegum.

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