One for the Money

Decent and enjoyable. She played a nice role and enjoyable to look at...

I love Evanovich and the entire Stephanie Plum series. If you read the book, don't see the movie, they cut all the intelligence and emasculated the men so Katherine H might look good. She is no Stephanie Plum, I thought Debbie Reynolds would shine as Grandma Mazur, nope. The English guy playing Morelli, has no clue who Morelli is as evidenced in his answers to questions posed prior to the launch of the movie. Daniel S. should be a good Ranger, he has the look, but no edge, no strength. This movie is hollow. The movie does not take anytime to develop anything and nothing makes sense. It is as dopey as that last sentence and like it is missing strong nouns. Netflix would be the only way I'd recommend this movie.

Very enjoyable light entertainment. A crime story that revolves around a clueless but persistent woman. The crime itself isn't all that important, and the focus is not on the narrative drive forward (which is good because it's kinda predictable). The focus is instead on the character of the female lead. Oddly, it's not about her growing as a character, or even about her getting more and more confident about her chosen line of work. It's not even about proving herself to everyone that she is capable.

The story is about persistence, about how this character is somehow ideally suited for this situation, but just lacks the knowledge to be truly successful.

If this wasn't such a light and airy movie, I would suspect that it was a metaphor for living in the age of the Internet, where knowledge is a commodity and anyone who has access to specific areas of knowledge can be an expert. Alas, it's a little less than that.

Unfortunately for the movie, the lack of character depth and the cumbersome box-like production make it seem very TV-ish. Like this was the pilot episode of a series. It also suffers from useless-narrator syndrome. I didn't read the book, but I suspect the source material may share some of the blame for that via lazy exposition.

Speaking from a guy's point of view about what is essentially a chick movie, it doesn't hurt that Heigl is hot, has a nice smile, and can handle a gun. And is a pretty good actress, sure, yeah... that. The casting could have been a lot worse. I would watch Heigl in just about anything if she stayed brunette.

The trailer would remind you of the forgettable The Bounty Hunter starring Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston with the former being the titular character whose target happens to be his ex-wife, having them bicker and run from various misadventures together. Reverse the roles in order to have a female bounty hunter going after an ex-boyfriend, and the stage is set for more of the same, no? Not quite. One for the Money has a lot more going for it, predominantly being a film written by and made by females for its intended audience, and being an engaging flick chick that wonderfully encapsulates a whodunnit.

Katherine Heigl seems to be on a successful roll on celluloid, and is in her element here in this romantic action adventure comedy as lead character Stephanie Plum, a rookie bounty hunter drawn to the profession only because she's desperate for a job to pay off impending bills. An ex-lingerie model, we follow her transition from girly girl to a somewhat tough cookie ready to hold her own in her cousin's business, where an added incentive is to hunt down and bring in her ex-boyfriend Joe Morelli (Jason O'Mara), a cop wanted for the gunning down an unarmed felon.

Yes one would expect the usual laughs coming from her inexperience in a new field, her constantly being outwitted by slier opponents in the big bad town of Trenton, New Jersey, and having that pitch perfect sexual charisma with her mark since they share a common romantic history before in their youths. But to my surprise One for the Money has a little bit more depth in its story than I would have imagined, playing out like a mystery with a crime at hand to solve, with Stephanie stumbling her way from fact to fact, interacting with various interesting caricatures who don't bore, and plays out exactly like an 80s private detective film of old in spirit.

Written by Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray and Liz Brixius off the well received novel of the same name by Janet Evanovich, this probably accounts for a lot of female-centric focus on elements in the storyline, as well as director Julie Anne Robinson's ability to center this very much like a chick flick, wrapped around an old fashioned whodunnit. I mean, only in a story with an attractive female protagonist would you have other females in the story either old, or matronly, and having not one but two hunks - Morelli and fellow alpha-male bounty hunter Ranger (Daniel Sunjata) - involved at the crossroads of her life. Plenty of characterization goes into the lead character of Stephanie Plum, and Heigl brings a certain sass to the role, with little street smarts that cover for her lack of experience in the field.

Granted the mystery doesn't quite play out with that kind of tension and suspense as one would expect from a true blur genre film, but it does enough with its slight touch and managed to keep interest afloat. While there are 18 novels to date in the series of Stephanie Plum's adventures in bounty hunting, with each novel title starting with a number / numerically related, reality is that any subsequent film will have to rely on how much this makes at the box office. My bet is that it'll likely be something quite modest with a potential of 17 more films made only if Heigl wants to be stereotyped (if not already) or typecast. Still, One for the Money sits above average on the entertainment scale, and can be recommended fare if you'd give it a chance.

If you haven't read the book you MIGHT like the movie. If you've read and loved the books this movie leaves a lot to be desired.

I suppose the MAIN part of the plot is the same but the details are scrambled or in some cases completely left out. Maybe I'm in the minority but a lot of the really funny stuff in the book was in the details and these parts got lost in the translation to the big screen. There was nothing too extreme in the book that might not have fit in the PG-13 rating so why did they change so many things? It was like the added more dialog in places and took out the fun and exciting stuff. Time shouldn't have been the reason either because the movie ran only an hour and a half - if they'd gone for two they could have had a much better (and closer to the book) adaptation.

I didn't care for the casting. Lula, Connie, and Vinnie matched the book descriptions of the characters fairly well but everyone else was off. It was like the casting director didn't read the book.

I'm disappointed because I had high hopes for the movie. I won't be buying the DVD or going to any sequels. Really, I think they'd have been better off to cast all unknowns that FITTED the characters and stuck to the plot from the book - it would have had a better shot.