Film: One For The Money
Film Rating: PG-13
by Adria DeLaune
Katherine Heigl has been in so many chick flicks lately that it’s easy to forget her abrupt 2010 departure from TV’s Grey’s Anatomy. This movie will remind you, and leave you feeling that perhaps Heigl should have stayed a while longer on the hit show, as her latest big screen offering (as both lead actress and producer) is just slightly above mediocre. Based on the Janet Evanovich book by the same name, One for the Money is cute, but nothing more.
Heigl stars as Stephanie Plum, a down and out thirty-something who has recently lost her job as a manager of Macy’s lingerie department. Cue the dinner table conversation where the soon-to-be heroine and her parents discuss her need to find a new job immediately or, according to her pushy mother, a husband to provide for her. Out of desperation and for lack of a better option, Stephanie takes a gig as a recovery agent for her cousin’s bail bond operation. She sets her sights on Joe Morelli (Jason O’Mara), a former cop and current fugitive whose return offers a $500K payday. Stephanie has a brief sordid past with Morelli, which the movie spends too much time emphasizing. During the 106 minutes of this motion picture, Stephanie fumbles through being shot at, getting handcuffed in her own apartment, surviving a face-off with a disgruntled fighter in a fighting cage, and apprehending a naked-and-proud-of-it neighbor.
In her pursuit of Morelli, Stephanie crosses paths with bounty hunter Ranger (fellow Grey’s alum, Daniel Sunjata) and Lula (Sherri Shepherd), a hooker with a penchant for snacks and colorful ill-fitted clothing, who adds a handful of laughs to the film. Insignificant characters come and go in this movie like a revolving door, but a few of them are so endearing or humorous that I found myself wishing they had larger roles. The best part of the entire flick is the quirky, gaudily-dressed grandmother, played by Debbie Reynolds. Reynolds and her stereotypical Jersey-esque wardrobe don’t get near the screen time they deserve.
Mix one part running and hiding, one part shooting and explosions, and one part awkward romantic tension and you’ve got yourself One for the Money. All in all, the characters are fairly flat and the scenery is bland. The movie is set in suburban New Jersey, but the accents are terrible. Listening to the actors speak to one another will make you feel like you are watching a bad imitation of an episode of Jersey Shore. The story line is predictable, but since the good guy wins in the end, you might be okay with that. If you’re anything like me, when the credits roll, you will leave the theater wishing the movie had done more to develop its characters and their relationships. Or that you had gone to see something else.
The verdict: 2/5 stars. This is one you should wait to rent.
