One A Day #3: None For the Money

Back when the movie was slated to come out in theaters, I began reading Janet Evanovich's One For the Money one night in the Ephrata High School Library while waiting for an officials' meeting to start, and I was charmed by the ten or so pages I got through. Unfortunately, book-to-movie adaptations usually suck.

I like a good rom-com (not just another boy-with-doubts-meets-girl-who's-about-to-marry-another-guy-she-doesn't-like-and-stalks-her-with-flowers-until-a-wise-black-man-convinces-them-to-grow-a-pair-and-live-happily-ever-after piece of childish crap, but an actually good rom-com that does something new, like Crazy, Stupid, Love or Love & Other Drugs), but One For the Money was so far from both the rehashed and the respectable breeds of rom-com and went in so many emotional directions that it wasn't really anything.

Grey's Anatomy's controversial Katherine Heigl tries to step out of her usual ditz in distress uniform to take on the role of Stephanie Plum, a former New Jersey lingerie clerk who goes to work for her cousin Vinnie (not Joe Pesci, but the tall, wierd-looking gangly guy who played one of the Others on Lost) as a bounty hunter, tasked with bringing in Joe Morelli (Jason O'Mara from ABC's short-lived Life On Mars and Fox's Terra Nova), a man with whom she has had some less (or more)-than-favorable sexual history.

But what little sexual chemistry there is in One For the Money is more palpable when Heigl is paired with "Ranger" Manoso (Rescue Me's Daniel Sunjata) than in her intermittent run-ins with O'Mara's Morelli, with whom she instead shared a species of banter one might find in an old 50's movie about dueling reporters who fall in love ("We're history! Like the pyramids, baby!" and "You're damned skippy!"). Sadder still, in her efforts to step out of her blonde suit, Heigl continuously trips on its wrinkled fabric as her Stephanie Plum finds herself at the mercy of both men, relying heavily on "Ranger"'s bounty-hunting skills in turn with being roughly rescued by Morelli, whether she wants it or not.

Also, as bounty hunter movies go--especially those regarding amateur bounty hunters (ie: last year's The Bounty Hunter and last century's USA Network series launcher, The Huntress), One For the Money felt extremely empty, in great need of more action, comedy, and feminine resourcefulness where instead Heigl's aforementioned doe-eyed damseltry flogged any enjoyment or content from most of the scenes she shared with the opposite sex. In fact, the only time she truly felt comfortable as Plum was while pumping local hooker Lula (The View's Sherri Shepherd) for information in (comic) exchange for junk food and beer.

If an adaptation of Two For the Dough is in the works, I shudder to think of spending any Dough on the results.

F