"For Love Or Money" (1993)



Rating: PG
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Directed By: Barry Sonnenfeld
Written By: Mark Rosenthal, Lawrence Konner
Runtime: 89 minutes
Studio: MCA Universal Home Video


Summary: 
Doug Ireland (Michael J. Fox) is a driven young concierge with a dream of owning his own hotel. When a wealthy hotel guest Christian Hanover (Anthony Higgins) offers to makes Doug's dream a reality, he is overjoyed. However, when he discovers that the price of his ambition includes deceiving Hanover's sweet, young mistress (Gabrielle Anwar), Doug must rethink his priorities.

Review: 
I’ve been meaning to watch this for a while. Any of the other reviews or articles about it have been pretty negative but I wanted to give it a chance. My expectations were on null. They didn’t raise much from that… 


It’s not a bad romantic comedy. It’s not one that will sweep you off your feet, but it doesn’t deserve all the negativity either. I’ve certainly watched far worse. There’s nothing terribly unique about it. It’s a sweet story, but then again most romantic comedies have sweet stories. Once we got away from the hotel setting we were good, things lifted from there. 

It just lacks effort from what I could see. There's nothing in there to set it apart from any other rom-com. It doesn't try to do anything original. You know from the get go what's going to be the outcome. While this can work sometimes if enough is included to flesh out the story, (because let's be honest, the majority of rom-coms are almost always predictable) this just doesn't do that. It feels like throwing a story together for the sake of it and there's nothing really to tell. It feels like the writers were tired and at the end of a very long day and had to throw a last minute essay together with a lot of 'Let's do this, let's do that, all for the hell of it because sure why now?'. 


Honestly the most special thing about it is the fact it stars Michael J Fox. And honestly, if it didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance. But he’s right in his comfort zone; as charming and funny and lovable as always. If any of it was going to make you crack a chuckle it was going to come from him. It maddens me how unfair this seems because he's so talented at comedy, it's just the material he was working with. In fact there is nothing wrong with any of the cast's performances, they were all good. It's all just simply the material they were working with. 

I think they were possibly aiming for another hit like "The Secret of My Success" with this one. But it lacked the same drive and heart that The Secret of My Success had. It's a shame. 

This isn’t the best romantic comedy in the world but I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it. It has its moments, in few, but it has them. 


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