Adapting Evanovich: Even Morons Deserve a Little Better Sometimes

I swear, there's nothing I hate more than being able to talk about this like some sort of knowledgeable expert or something! You see, last week, mom dragged me with her to see something she's been anticipating for years now: the film adaptation of Janet Evanovich's best-selling novel, One for the Money, her immortal tale of awful lady stereotypes poised as some sort of bold feminism. (Can you believe it? This chick knows nothing beyond the world of lingerie, and yet she's trying to be a bounty hunter to make ends meet, like a man! Isn't that adorable-slash-empowering???) Of course, my first exposure to Evanovich's oeuvre came back in August, where I quickly surmised that Janet Evanovich and/or her sweatshop team of ghostwriters are no-talent hacks and you really should not read the things that they do, ever. Yet, it wasn't that difficult to convince me to go. For one thing, movie theatres are the only place around here where you can get one of the most fuckably awesome sodas ever: Mr. Pibb. And also, the film sounded like a bloody trainwreck waiting to happen and, honestly, aren't trainwrecks fun to watch, too?

As it turns out, it was a trainwreck in the worst possible way. Not so bad it's hilarious, just so bad it's really bland. Janet Evanovich isn't a good writer by any means, but at least she's under no delusion that what she's creating is legitimate literature or anything. Her writing doesn't take itself seriously and her books are slightly more passable for it (emphasis on "slightly"), whereas the film suffers for playing everything a little too straight. (This is primarily the fault of professional thankless asshole Katherine Heigl, who undersells every single moment she's given, whether comedic or dramatic.) Also, I've never even read the source book, nor am I particularly keen to do so, yet it's obvious even to me that they cut out a lot of details. Stephanie's family is shoved down the audience's collective esophagi during the first half of the film, only to abruptly disappear from the second half, never to appear again. Excellent story structure, guys! The case, focusing on the origins of Stephanie's gross relationship with her hunky cop boyfriend Joe Morelli (played here by Jason O'Mara, looking like a weird un-hunky hybrid of Jason Segel and my dentist) when he's falsely accused of a murder that he totally committed but is innocent of just because he's a cop, is rendered almost nonsensical because silly little things like "details" or "explanations of who the hell people are" are thrown out in favour of stereotypical lady terror. Stephanie is faced with the threat of rape in Ten Big Ones and she was also threatened with it here, so I can only guess that Janevanovich just kind of has a thing for rape. Apparently that's her scene, or something. She's also into racism, as once again minorities in her universe exist only as thugs or hos. So, long story short, it was a pretty miserable experience with an underwhelming cast, aside from John Leguizamo's effectively slimy villain who probably deserved a couple more scenes. Don't go see it, blah blah blah.

And then comes the long car ride home. Mom confirms that it was also kind of bad even for Janet E-fan-oviches. (I hope they don't actually call themselves that or anything.) Which got me to filling the time by thinking: Is it possible to create an adequately entertaining adaptation of a mediocre intellectual property? Specifically, this intellectual property. What would I do if I was a big Hollywood writer roped into adapting something like this? Astonishingly, the answer seems pretty clear. Basic cable!

The novels seem to be structured around one big bad guy to hunt down, interspersed with smaller, aggressively quirky cases she takes on just to get by (and also to fund her love of shopping for lingerie and shit). Compressed into movie form, these diversions seem egregiously extraneous and out of place, distracting from what should be the goal of telling a coherent story. It's a structure that's practically begging to be made into, say, one of the more recent, lesser USA original series that I don't watch and always roll my eyes at when they're advertised during my Psych, though. Each season could have a Big Bad Guy who comprises the common thread running through the episode, as Stephanie also takes on a smaller case each week to make lingerie money/stall for time/hone her, um, "skills". This would also give more time for the aggressively sitcommy family dinner scenes Evanovich seems to have such a stiffy for (and, depressingly, where most of her talents, such that they are, lie). Doesn't Burn Notice already feature plenty of interminable family hijinx already? So there's a precedent. And, though it's not a USA show, I hear that the first season of Dexter also provides a precedent for the "single crappy novel adapted into an entire serialised season of a TV show while maintaining case-of-the-week elements" paradigm. (Spoiler alert: Dee Dee gets killed.) Since Janet Evanovich isn't original and really doesn't go for stuff unless there's already a precedent anyway, it just seems like the obvious way to go. Would I watch it? No. Noooooooohooohoooooo. But, if there must exist a live-action adaptation of Evanovich (and middle-aged housewives across the country say there must!), then this seems potentially slightly less displeasing to slightly more people.

My point: It's easier to do other people's jobs better than said other people as long as you don't actually have to do their jobs or anything. Also, if people in the audience have never read your source material but can still think of so many better ways to adapt it, other people, then you really shouldn't be allowed to do your job, either.

(Wikipedia tells me that, in the novel, Stephanie gets her bounty hunter job by blackmailing her cousin Vinnie, threatening to reveal to the public his "use of a duck for sexual gratification". If that's actually in the book, then I thank the screenwriters, at least, for shying away from broad duck-fucking jokes. The jokes are broad, I mean. Not the ducks. Though, actually, after you fucked a duck, some part of it probably WOULD be broader than before and- let's just forget I ever mentioned this.)