"One for The Money"

I do not consider myself to be exceedingly intelligent. I am not a member of MENSA. I have no access to state secrets or privileged information (other than my own). I am not, nor do I pretend to be, a prognosticator of any degree or talent. I have no knowledge of the inner workings of Hollywood politics. There are a great many things that I do not know, but only one of them haunts me.

How, for . . . How does Katherine Heigl keep getting work?  Please, someone explain this to me. End my sleepless nights.

I recently watched “One For The Money”, the film adaptation of the Janet Evanovich novel of the same name.  In the movie, Heigl plays Evanovich’s popular sleuth, “Stephanie Plum”.  I say plays, as though Heigl were capable of some sort of acting range. What really happens (and anyone who has seen “The Ringer”, “Knocked Up”, “27 Dresses”, ”The Ugly Truth” and “Killers” can testify to this) is that Katherine Heigl keeps the same character, and that that character is uptight, condescending, obnoxious, snide, inept and phony.

In her earlier movies, it wasn’t quite as noticeable or detrimental. In “The Ringer”, Heigl’s character seemed like more of an afterthought; a romantic interest for Johnny Knoxville’s character whose presence was meant to be a distraction for Knoxville and to create an internal conflict for him.  In this movie, Heigl plays a coordinator at the Special Olympics where Knoxville, pretending to be developmentally disabled, has entered as a contestant to pay off his gardener’s extensive medical bills.  The movie, however, focuses very little on the potential or would-be romance between Knoxville and Heigl, and much more on Knoxville bonding with the other contestants.  Both of these aspects are meant to make him feel guilty about what he’s doing (which he already does from the beginning) which leads to him eventually confessing.

In “Knocked Up”, Heigl plays a woman who gets pregnant from a one-night-stand with a nearly-unemployed slacker played by Seth Rogen.  The bulk of the movie is fairly predictable, going through the motions of these two people, who would never have been brought together were it not for random chance and too much alcohol, following through with a decision that, clearly, neither of them want to, pretending the whole time that it’s what the want, and trying not to resent each other for any of it.  Any resemblance between this movie and romance or comedy is purely coincidental.  The only comedy to be derived from this movie is from the supporting cast, which, for all the very funny people involved, should be more.

“27 Dresses” is nearly unwatchable, and had almost ruined Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” for me until I saw “Gnomeo and Juliet”.  In it, Heigl plays a character who has, (and I cannot emphasize this enough) voluntarily, been the maid-of-honor and organizer of 27 different weddings for different friends, and then spends the rest of movie demanding that everyone else feel sorry for her that she hasn’t been married yet, particularly when her sister starts dating her boss, for whom she (Heigl’s character) has had a secret crush.  It is the most predictable and unoriginal story, full of unlikeable and unsympathetic characters, with lame jokes and unnatural dialog. The only redeemable quality this movie is a (mostly) decent performance by James Marsden.

“The Ugly Truth” breaks new ground of predictability as Heigl plays an uptight producer of a morning news show who hires the cable equivalent of a shock jock to boost ratings, then lets herself be convinced to take his advice to better her chances with some other guy.  He (the shock jock) then proceeds to fall for her.  This is yet another version of “Pygmalion”, which was the basis for “My Fair Lady”, and every version which has proceeded it has been more original, less predictable, better performed, more sympathetic, more likable, and generally more stomachable.  This is even probably the worst performance I’ve seen put forth by Gerard Butler.

In “Killers”, Katherine Heigl is back to being the only unlikeable part of the film, when she marries a man, played by Ashton Kutcher (“That 70’s Show”, “Two and a Half Men”), without knowing that he’s a secret agent, and she doesn’t find out until people start trying to kill them.  It starts out as a solid film for Kutcher before he falls into old habits of being over-the-top in order to be more funny, but once he’s rolling, both he and Heigl quickly become insufferable.  This is also yet another film which teaches the lesson of “just because you cast a bunch of comedy actors, doesn’t mean you have a comedy”.

As bad as all of these films were that came before, “One for the Money” is even worse.  Instead of getting someone who could actually carry the roll, like Mila Kunis or Rachel Weiss, they take Katherine Heigl, dye her hair brunette and have her try to speak in a New Jersey accent, which just ends up sounding caricaturish.  Everything Heigl does in this film plays as phony.  The character of Stephanie Plum is supposed to not know what she’s doing, but the way Heigl plays it, it’s as though she’s pretending to not know what she’s doing, and she’s hamming it up for the camera, the way she always does.

I feel I need to acknowledge those parts of the film which actually pass muster, but I with the caveat that it is in no way a recommendation for this film.  Debbie Reynolds shines as she always does as Stephanie Plum’s grandmother.  Jason O’Mara turns in an adequate performance, and his accent is more subtle, but I’ve seen him do better.

However, making this film a Heigl vehicle has done it’s damage.  I now have less interest in the works of Janet Evanovich than I did before.  If you want to see a decent movie about a woman learning how to be a badass bounty hunter, rent “Domino”.  If you don’t want to see yet another wretched Heigl performance, then save yourself the $1.30 at Redbox and the two hours.

Also, I want to ask the people who make the trailers for her movies one question: To what demon in hell did you sell your soul to be able to keep convincing me to see her movies?