# Where the Money Is (2000)

### reviewed by
James Brundage

    Where the Money Is (2000, PG-13)

Director David Fincher gave the general public the idea of single-serving friends in `Fight Club.' Director Marek Kanievska (captain of the helms of such cinematic Titantics as Less than Zero) and Canada 3000 introduced to me the concept of the single serving movie.

Like the single serving friend, the single serving movie is largely uninteresting, cheap, seemingly less intelligent than you are, and served to you with a shrink wrapped set of headphones for five Canadian Dollars for three showings. On my flight from London to Toronto, I was granted the joy of a triple whamme: Mission to Mars, Mickey Blue Eyes, and Where the Money is… three films that are highly mediocre at best.

Where the Money is centers around Carol (Linda Fiorentino), a bored housewife who works at a nursing home, has an on-the-rocks marriage with her husband Wayne (Dermont Mulroney), and cares for ex-bank robber extraordinaire Henry (Paul Newman). Carol wants one more thrill, Wayne's not getting her rocks off, so she figures she'll try Henry's screws (or screwing Henry) and maybe even rob an armored car route in the meantime of a couple of million dollars… who knows?

But, if the hackneyed and unoriginal names of the triad running the show are any indication of the collective imagination of Where the Money Is (and they are), you know you're not going to get an interesting caper of double crosses rife with sexual tension a la The Wachowski's Bound. You're going to get a mass-marketable caper with a few jokes thrown in and the obligatory Last Seduction rip off that comes with any time Linda Fiorentino steps onto the screen.

Whether this is simply the result of a vapid imagination on the part of screenwriters E. Max Frye, Topper Lilien, and Carroll Cartwright or part of corporate decisions related to the typecasting of Fiorentino as the perky, evil seductress you have to root for is both beyond my sphere of knowledge and irrelevant to the issue: Where the Money Is just ends up too clear cut for its own good. The caper itself is predictable, not tense at all, and this is the absolute high point of the movie. This, of course, makes Where the Money Is just like any other rental on the shelves, with all of the appeal.

Fiorentino, Newman, and Mulroney are all capable performers handed terrible dialogue to work with (Fiorentino actually says `I won't tell the police, but I may make you play bingo.') and asked to make it sound musical, and only their incredible prowess as thespians allows them to pull off a half decent performance with material that chimps could have typed. If only the writers had tried to be original, or at least pick a good film like Bound to carbon copy, then they would have been much better off. As it is, Where the Money is ends up being just another movie I can't recommend.

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