While her books are quite popular, Janet Evanovich is not known for being a literary genius. She sells like hotcakes though and has a massive group of followers, mainly of the female kind. So why not adapt one of her novels into a movie starring Katherine Heigl and cash in at the box office on it? After seeing One for the Money, the adaptation in question, I have many reasons why not.
One for the Money is a movie so stupid and miscalculated my brain was numb after enduring it. It is not a romcom or a regular comedy (proven by the lack of laughter during the screening), and it’s definitely not a drama (although it thinks it’s all of those things). No, One for the Money is a giant turd shat out of the Hollywood system to be smeared on thousands of screens and is an insult to every viewer who ends up seeing it.
The plot is so simple a child could have written the script in finger paint and the result would be about the same. Stephanie Plum (Heigl) is a recently unemployed, divorced, Jersey girl who convinces her cousin to give her a job as a bail bond agent (a job she has no clue how to do). Her first big case, to apprehend a wanted murderer (Jason O’Mara), just happens to be a former fling from high school and… well you see where this predictable storyline is going. Do they get handcuffed together? Yes! Does he see her naked in the shower? Yes! Do they pretend to hate each other and then end up together? Double yes!
If this was turned into a weekly series on NBC it might be watchable. As a 106 minute skid mark in the theatre it’s just painful. Director Julie Anne Robinson is mainly a TV director too so maybe this is just a setup for a series and will act as the pilot in the long run.
The one saving grace to the film that helps keep it more watchable than the similarly themed 2010 film The Bounty Hunter is Daniel Sunjata of Rescue Me and Grey’s Anatomy fame. He plays another agent named Ranger who helps Stephanie learn the ropes and is a hundred times more fun to watch than Heigl and O’Mara combined.
Sadly, One for the Money will probably make enough money that Heigl will keep getting these one-dimensional roles and films like this will continue to be made. It should be avoided like the plague though.
Rating: 
Rated PG
Cast: Katherine Heigl, Jason O’Mara, Daniel Sunjata
Directed by: Julie Anne Robinson
Top image: A scene from One for the Money. Courtesy eOne Films.
