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One for the Money Review: In (Slight) Defense of The Rainbow Killer, Katherine Heigl

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Film Reviews | Comments (25)

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One for the Money, based on the Janet Evanovich novel of the same name, is not a terrible movie so much as it’s an insignificant one. It’s shoddy, poorly written, and directed with the sure hand of a palsied woman afflicted with arthritis. However, the character at the center of the movie — and the focus of Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series — is solid, and as much as it pains me to say as much, Katherine Heigl does that character justice. I don’t know what it says about Heigl, but she’s never looked and acted more at home as a lower-middle class Jersey girl with more attitude than actual ability. It’s her milieu, and of all the A-listers that could’ve landed the role, Heigl is more suited than any of them. Her sour disposition and sh*tty attitude finally played right into a role.

In One for the Money, Heigl is Stephanie Plum, unemployed after a three-year stint in the lingerie department at a Macy’s Department store. Desperate for work, she takes up employ as a bounty hunter set to track down Joe Morelli (Jason O’Mara), a cop who skipped bail after being accused of shooting and killing a known heroin dealer.

Plum, naturally, has a history with Morelli — he deflowered her in high school, and after he didn’t call her back, she ran him over with her car. They have your typical romantic-comedy love-hate relationship down pat: She steals his truck, he handcuffs her naked to a shower curtain rod. Initially, Plum doesn’t care about the circumstances of his bail skipping, she just wants the money. But as she undertakes the investigation, and as bodies begin piling up, Morelli becomes something more than just a poor man’s Gerard Butler parading around without his shirt: He becomes a guy that she can f*ck — as soon as she collect the bond money, that is.

Ultimately, it is Heigl who elevates One for the Money ever-so-slightly above the direct-to-DVD material and its weak supporting cast, which includes John Leguizamo and Sherri Shepherd as a sassmouth prostitute. It’s an inept film, listlessly paced, filled with cringe-worthy wisecracks, and pointlessly lingering shots at Heigl’s cleavage. But Heigl is game as Stephanie Plum: The eye-rolling and her eat-shit smirk is perfect for the role Unfortunately, as producer (along with her mother) she assembles third-rate talent in front of and behind the camera, and the result is a film really barely worthy of remarking upon.









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Comments

pointlessly lingering shots at Heigl’s cleavage

Well, maybe not completely pointless. Maybe.

Posted by: Rob at January 27, 2012 3:34 PM

f*ck? Has Pajiba gone PG-13 in the wake of Sundancegate?

Posted by: TylerDFC at January 27, 2012 3:39 PM

With the strong similarities to The Ugly Truth, including some of the same scenes, you wonder if she had this wisecrack ideas while filming that and the producers/director/writer ignored her, so she just made the version she saw in her head.

I'd like to think this film exists because Heigl was bored on set.

Posted by: Brock W at January 27, 2012 3:41 PM

Just as I suspected. This will be perfect to take my MIL to on a Sunday afternoon. She loves the Stephanie Plum series (I think it is harmless brain candy) & thinks that Avatar is the height of cinematic achievement.

Posted by: Bodhi at January 27, 2012 3:55 PM

I knew it wouldn't be good, so the review comes as no surprise. I am glad Heigl at least does some justice to Stephanie Plum - a character that does not require a great deal of depth, just some healthy self-deprecation. I will be going to see this with a group of women after we all imbibe a goodly amount of alcohol. It's a fine plan for a Sunday afternoon without football.

Posted by: Reba at January 27, 2012 4:17 PM

"Her sour disposition and sh*tty attitude finally played right into a role."

Oh Dustin, you and your back handed compliments.
Don't ever change.

Posted by: OldSchool60 at January 27, 2012 4:27 PM

In other words, it's a perfect adaptation of the lifeless, eye-roll worthy humor of the Stephanie Plum books. Popcorn lit with low standards becomes barely mediocre popcorn movie.

Posted by: Robert at January 27, 2012 4:46 PM

What Robert said.

Posted by: Stella at January 27, 2012 4:55 PM

Posted by: ponch at January 27, 2012 5:12 PM

Oh no, no, no, no, fuck no.

This sphincter blister has the fucking nerve to shit on Knocked Up, but has no problem making the same piece of shit rom-coN turd sandwich with a diahrea spread over and over again.

I hope she drowns in a Fear Factor vat of donkey jizz.

Posted by: L.O.V.E. at January 27, 2012 5:28 PM

In related news, Vulture thinks her carrer is basically over http://tinyurl.com/7loqj5e (it's rather long, but the point is that she should have taken roles like this and embrace her bitchness much sooner)

Posted by: Holly at January 27, 2012 6:58 PM

Check that second paragraph.

Even I suck at grammar and my eye kept twitching while trying to read that.

Posted by: DeistBrawler at January 27, 2012 7:32 PM

Am I the only one that would pay money to see Gerard Butler and Jason O'Mara duke it out for shirtless rights to these kind of movies? Kind of a Scotland vs Ireland thing...

Posted by: snapnhiss at January 27, 2012 8:00 PM

The biggest surprise to me in this review is that Dustin feels the need to self-censor the word "sh*tty", and yet "eat-shit" is apparently okay. Dude, your advertising network needs to f*ck off.

Posted by: Uriah Creep at January 27, 2012 10:00 PM

I was expecting a cruel deconstruction,but I think Dustin summed it up perfectly. A third rate insignificant film. Not worth the effort.

Besides,it won't affect the book series,which I love.

Posted by: Case Crum at January 27, 2012 10:25 PM

This movie could have been great Sunday matinee fun with Marisa Tomei and a decent screenplay. If romcoms must exist they should all have a gun wielding, foul-mouthed female protagonist with a sassy hooker for a sidekick.

Posted by: sunny at January 28, 2012 8:52 AM

Military singles & their admirers’ best club_"meet military com"_Lots of handsome guys and sexy women there.Meet your soul-mate today!

Posted by: Joshua at January 28, 2012 9:20 PM

What the fuck is with the asterisks in the review? Since when is this site PG?

I am so offended by those asterisks, I don't know what else to say right now.

Posted by: Maryscott O'Connor at January 29, 2012 12:56 AM

And I hate the new site motto. "sweetened by mock, lightened by droll" is just lame. Bring back the old one.

Posted by: Maryscott O'Connor at January 29, 2012 12:59 AM

I am offended by your anti-vowelism. Why didn't you star it "shi**y"? Why is it always "f*ck"?

I'll tell you why: Because you're an anti-vowelist.

Oh yes you are! You're a rabid anti-vowelist!

You consonants, think you're better than every other letter, not to mention lowly punctuation marks such as yours truly, just because you outnumber the vowels 21 (and sometimes 20) to 5 (and sometimes 6), you think that gives you the right to just bully them around and tell them what to do, and if their mere presence in a word offends you, why, just * them. Do that often enough and you don't even think of i's and u's as letters any more, in your mind they're less-than-letters, more like 3/5s of a letter. You'd probably like to see them all locked up or deported, wouldn't you? "Ship them all to Wales," is your attitude. "They can use them there, their words never seem to have enough vowels."

Yeah, real *u**i** funny.

Well, vowels have just as much right to exist as ANY letter, so *u** YOU, *u**i* *o**e*, and your crimes against vowelmanity. It's time the vowels and punctuation marks stood up to you and your bullying ways. So let me put this in letters you'll understand:

PLLLLLLLLLTTTTTTTTTT!

Posted by: , at January 29, 2012 11:02 AM

One for the Money should have been a really good film. Should have. The story was there. The cast is good. The sets and action set the right tone.

The problem is that the studio clearly viewed it as a cash grab. They hired a low cost director and new screenwriters and none of them know how to handle a feature. The pacing is all over the place and the humor mostly falls flat. But who cares? The Evanovich fans will throw money at the screen to see Stephanie Plum come to life, declare the books are better, and wait for number nineteen to arrive in the fall.

Posted by: Robert at January 29, 2012 12:43 PM

Read the comment by "Bodhi" and wow. As the MIL to two young women, I have to ask...could you possibly be anymore insulting to your mother-in-law? Thank God my sons married classier, more honestly decent young women than you are! I'm breathing a sigh of relief here, and feeling some real pity for your poor MIL, not to mention your husband.

Posted by: Kelly at January 30, 2012 3:25 AM

@,: shall we meet behind the shed and make lots of little Umlauts?

Posted by: cinekat at January 30, 2012 6:16 AM

No

Posted by: @,: at January 30, 2012 7:19 AM

Wow, Kelly That seems harsh. She didn't say anything terrible about her MiL. She simply indicated that her MiL's taste in books runs to popular fiction and her taste in movies tends to favor visual blockbusters. Nowhere in there did she indicate that her MiL is a bad person, or that she doesn't like her or thinks poorly of her choices in entertainment. In fact, she obviously pays attention to what her MiL likes, and therefore pegged this as something she'd enjoy seeing and an opportunity for them to spend time together. Where is the lack of class in that?

Posted by: Reba at January 30, 2012 9:58 AM