One for the Money

Based on a series of novels by Janet Evanovich, One for the Money follows unemployed and newly-divorced Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl) as she talks her way into a job as a bounty hunter for her irate cousin – with the film subsequently detailing Stephanie’s ongoing efforts at tracking down and capturing her former lover (Jason O’Mara’s Joe Morelli). It’s a relatively decent premise that’s squandered virtually from the opening frames by filmmaker Julie Anne Robinson, as the director, working from Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray, and Liz Brixius’ screenplay, has infused the proceedings with a pervasively (and relentlessly) off-kilter feel that proves disastrous. The movie’s atmosphere of forced quirkiness, which is, by and large, nothing short of infuriating, results in a palpable absence of momentum, with the ongoing emphasis on eye-rollingly hackneyed elements serving only to exacerbate this feeling. (There is, for example, a hopelessly tiresome sequence in which Stephanie’s family attempts to set her up with a bland, boring appliance salesman.) Heigl’s broad, sitcom-like performance proves to be the least of the movie’s problems, although it’s worth noting that her complete and total lack of chemistry with love interest O’Mara ensures that the pair’s scenes together are especially tedious. The end result is a second-rate and consistently worthless Out of Sight knockoff – there’s a jazzy score and everything! – that predominantly feels like a shelved television pilot, which should ensure that we’ve seen the last of Stephanie Plum on the big screen. (We can only hope, anyway.)

* out of ****