BEFORE: I'm back from a couple of days in Sullivan County, NY. We just needed to get away from NYC for a couple days, away from the election and away from the pandemic - too much news can make you crazy these days. Of course there's no real way to get away from either situation, we still heard all the news about Biden's transition and Trump not accepting it, and the news about the potential vaccine, so even though we still had to wear masks while gambling in the casino and visiting antique shops and old-timey general stores, we still managed to have a good time and a nice little break. We found ourselves in Bethel and decided to track down the site of the original Woodstock Festival, where there's a monument overlooking the festival field, which I think they JUST finally finished cleaning up like last year. That's how much trash remained after the 3-day festival in 1969. JK. Then we took in all that Monticello, Liberty, Neversink and Callicoon had to offer us - which wasn't much because most everything up there had started shutting down for the season, or in some cases never opened up at all, like the Bethel Flea Market. It didn't help that we were selecting activities from a pre-pandemic 2020 local guidebook, which never got corrected after COVID hit, but we learned that it was a good idea to call each establishment first before driving across the county to visit it.
But after just two days upstate in those sleepy little towns and villages, it's a bit tough to get back into my regular fast-paced city routine. And even if I were to find a simple little town and think for a minute, "Hey, it might be nice to move up here, get away from it all..." after a week of being away from it all, I'd no doubt feel the urge to rush right back to it all. Or I'd be stuck there and end up bored out of my mind.
This was supposed to be the "Black Widow" slot, with Scarlett Johansson carrying over from "The Perfect Score", but we all know that's impossible now. I preserved my original idea for a chain (or, umm, close to it) for as long as I could, but now I just have to get to the end of the year. (Programming note: I could have chosen "Not Another Teen Movie" tonight, it also would get me to tomorrow's film, so all roads lead to Rome at this point, but I chose this one over that one because that one has a larger cast, and it should be easier to link to next year, if it stays on Netflix that long.). And after one or two more films, just like those seasonal upstate motels, I'm shutting down for a month, and I'll re-open for business a few days before Christmas. So instead of Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo Nam carries over from "The Perfect Score".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Bounty Hunter" (Movie #3,460)
THE PLOT: Unemployed and newly-divorced Stephanie Plum lands a job at her cousin's bail-bond business, where her first assignment puts her on the trail of a wanted local cop from her romantic past.
AFTER: We've all heard from time to time about failed TV pilots, where a proposed series shoots its first episode, then they do some test screenings with focus groups, maybe with a little luck that episodes makes it to the air, but then it doesn't pull in the ratings that the network was expecting, and the whole series gets shelved. Well, this is a (perhaps rare) example of a failed film franchise pilot - there are probably others, but nothing's leaping to mind right now. A little internet research, however, leads me to some other ones, like "Green Lantern", "Avatar: The Last Airbender", "John Carter", 2013's "The Lone Ranger", "Eragon", "The Golden Compass", and of course a film I watched in early October, "The Dark Tower". All of these films would have loved to have sequels, but they were all one-and-done - though the "His Dark Materials" franchise, which includes "The Golden Compass", recently got resurrected as an HBO series.
Those examples, though, all come from the land of comic books and dark fantasy, so perhaps "One for the Money" is unique in being a drama (dramedy?) franchise that could have/should have been a multi-part film franchise, but just couldn't lock down an audience. The 1998 movie "Out of Sight" is perhaps another one, based on the books of Elmore Leonard, and I think instead of making more movies, the female lead character appeared in a "Karen Sisco" TV series instead. Franchises die all the time, due to changing audience needs or perhaps lack of upkeep, like the "Chronicles of Narnia" series that only produced 3 out of a possible 7 books by C.S. Lewis before fizzling out. "One for the Money" was the first movie to feature Stephanie Plum, who came from a series of novels written by Janet Evanovich, and there are 27 books in that series to date. But now it's eight years later, with no sign of future books like "Two for the Dough" or "Three to Get Ready" hitting the big screen, and maybe that's for the best.
Is this a terrible film? Not really, it's more average than anything else, but I think that's part of the problem. A terrible film's more likely to hold my interest, because I'm going to at least pay attention to how bad it is, how many things don't make sense or don't work from a narrative standpoint, and then I'll have something to complain about. But an average film's just going to put me to sleep, because it's neither here nor there, it's not going to thrill me or piss me off, I'm just likely to tune it out, and that's what happened here. I only made it to the one-hour mark of this 90-minute film before falling asleep and waking up during the closing credits. Of course, I could just go back to 0:55 and try to pick up where I left off, which I did, but of course by then the damage has been done, I couldn't really get back in the groove or remember who THAT character is or where he fits in to the plot.
No worries, I can read the whole plot summary on Wikipedia and piece things together again - so let's start with the ridiculous premise, which has a newly-divorced woman taking a job tracking down criminals who don't appear in court on time, not really a "bounty hunter" per se, just someone who finds people and drags them in to court. But deciding to suddenly enter this field with no prior experience seems very foolhardy and possibly even counter-productive, there's not even a consideration made to how she's going to actually DO this job, or deal with rowdy people who don't want to be brought to the police, how she's going to defend herself if things get rough, does she need any training with firearms, etc. etc. Nope, let's just gloss over all that and get her out on the road so she can start kicking ass and taking names, even though she's got zero experience in this field. Look, I'm job-hunting right now myself, and it's rough out there in NYC right now - I've applied for retail jobs, something I said I'd never do again, but these are desperate times. Still, I wouldn't go work tomorrow as a bartender or a food preparer, because I know those require special training, which I don't have. (Ideally I could have gone back to work in movie theaters, where I do have experience, only they haven't re-opened in NYC yet.)
Then we've got to deal with the fact that Stephanie not only GETS this job that she's not qualified for (her cousin conveniently runs the bail-bond business, and she also conveniently has personal blackmail material to use against him) but the big fugitive in the area is a former cop wanted for murder, and he just happens to be a guy she used to date in high school. She says she's not still looking for vindication following their break-up, but I think we can all figure out that's not true. The murder case against him has a lot of missing pieces, it seems - a lot of the main characters involved are either dead or missing, so it seems we're never going to come close to figuring out what happened. Anyway, it's not the job of the skip tracer to solve the case, that's police work, and Stephanie's not a cop - but the screenwriter can't seem to tell the difference between a bounty hunter and a police officer. Also, being personally involved in the case can't really be much of a help either in this line of work, it's probably highly unprofessional to track down your ex-boyfriend and bring him in, another little thing that gets glossed over here.
There's a missing prostitute, a dead heroin dealer, the prostitute's boxer boyfriend, and the boxer's manager all circling the case, so (again) even though it's NOT in her job description, Stephanie sets out to figure out what really happened, instead of just finding her ex and bringing him in. Perhaps this is part of the reason for this film's lack of success, there's no clear narrative in the constantly-shifting goals of the main character. Other cases that she works, like the nudist fugitive that she has to bring in, seem very tangential to the main narrative, and are essentially just time-fillers that go nowhere. And if her ex, Morelli, is truly innocent, then why is he hiding out and not showing up for work? Why can't he clear his name on his own, if he's such a good cop then why does he need Stephanie's help? Eventually it all comes together, but I'm still not sure that it all lines up properly.
Overall there's that feeling that most of the actors were just phoning it in here, especially Heigl. She got nominated for a 2012 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for this, but lost (?) that unwanted award to Kristen Stewart for the double whammy of "Snow White and the Huntsman" and "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2". Yeah, that seems about right. It also feels like this was made during the time when Hollywood was striving to release films with strong female lead characters, though they hadn't quite figured out the formula yet, since there was still the requirement for at least two near-nude scenes. Sure, there's a way to incorporate both nude scenes and female empowerment, but that combination is not on display here, not when the female lead is surprised in the shower, and ends up handcuffed in place while naked, and forced to call a man on the phone to help her. Sorry, try again - plus, which screenwriter's weird fetish was that?
Nobody really comes out on top here, not bounty hunters, not women, not cops, and certainly not New Jersey. Why not just listen to Grandma and date that nice (but admittedly boring) fellow, Bernie Kuntz? At one point the film uses a hamster on a wheel as a metaphor about running in place without getting anywhere, and the same concept can really be applied to the entire film.
Also starring Katherine Heigl (last seen in "The Ugly Truth"), Jason O'Mara (last seen in "Wakefield"), Daniel Sunjata (last seen in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"), John Leguizamo (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Sherri Shepherd (last seen in "Top Five"), Debbie Reynolds (last seen in "Bright Lights"), Debra Monk (last seen in "Demolition"), Nate Mooney (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Adam Paul, Fisher Stevens (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Ana Reeder (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Patrick Fischler (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Ryan Michelle Bathe, Annie Parisse (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Danny Mastrogiorgio (last seen in "God's Pocket"), Gavin-Keith Umeh, Louis Mustillo (last seen in "Bobby"), Joshua Elijah Reese, Olga Merediz (also last seen in "Top Five"), Harry O'Toole, John Joseph Williams, Angela Pietropinto (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Jack Erdie, Alexis Treadwell, Michael Laurence (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Jarrod DiGiorgi, David Flick (last seen in "The Next Three Days")
RATING: 5 out of 10 picked locks
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