FOR LOVE OR MONEY: A Bare-Bones, Functional Comedy

For a few years now, Mark Murphy (the writer and director of For Love or Money) has been working in television, and has worked exclusively in the comedy and horror genres. This film is his latest release; he has made feature-length films, including one starring James Buckley of The Inbetweeners fame. But For Love or Money is his most high-profiled yet, a fact proven by Samantha Barks’ lead turn as an acerbic gold-digger.

This is the basic premise: Mark, played by True Blood’s Robert Kazinsky, is about to inherit twenty million dollars. His lifelong crush, Connie, catches wind, and conspires to marry him in order to inherit the money. The trouble is, Mark finds out her plan prior to the marriage and, angry, decides to annoy her and inconvenience her; he wants to goad her into revealing what her plan was all along – will she spill the beans before the marriage, or will Mark have to admit he knows?

Recycled gags

The film is being billed as an “Unromantic Comedy”, and that’s not far off the mark; very quickly, there are a whole host of scenes in which Mark messes with Connie in various ways. He swaps her shampoo with hair removal cream, fills the house with terrible close-up art of his and her faces, among other things, and Mark Murphy directs those scenes with a fair amount of verve and comic timing; more often than not, the visual gags were funny enough to get at least a chuckle out of me, even if they’d been done before in a whole host of other romantic comedies.

The lacking aspect of For Love or Money is the writing. In most scenes, particularly the first half, each scene is functional: the dialogue is expository. It tells the audience what it needs to know, and then it moves on. There are a couple of gags in each scene, but the problem is, few of the written gags are funny, and as a result of that, most scenes in the film seen very perfunctory. There is one scene in which Connie has to try on every dress in a bridal shop to find one that Mark approves of (the politics of this scene are also very dubious), in which she explains the joke. The audience is intelligent enough to understand the comedic device being used, and the scene became laborious quickly; there are many other scenes in the film which were written in a similar fashion.

Political Leanings

Aside from that one scene, For Love or Money has a fairly healthy political outlook. It doesn’t fall into the trap of other films of this type, such as Bride Wars, in which the two lead characters treat each other horribly for no reason other than selfishness and never face repercussions or work to become better people. For Love or Money avoids falling into that trap by imbuing the two main characters with relatable back-stories and arcs which result in them acknowledging their faults. For the most part, it’s a completely well-meaning film about their being more to life than money, and although it does occasionally descend into mawkishness, Mark Murphy carries the theme through to the film’s conclusion, and it does land.

Elevating Performances

Both Robert Kazinsky and Samantha Barks  give good performances, and even where the script lets them down, the two do their best to be watchable, as does the supporting cast. The problem is, the members of that supporting cast aren’t given much to do throughout the course of the film; the majority of the screen-time they get is dedicated to explaining narrative developments or helping more important characters realise important truths. As a result, many of the characters feel underwritten, and it’s difficult to really get invested whenever they appear onscreen.

Overall, For Love or Money feels more like something you’d watch on a Sunday afternoon, or perhaps in the background while you work on something or do chores than a film to which you’d dedicate your undivided attention. There are a couple of fun, breezy jokes, and there is a sense that everything comes to a proper conclusion, but the narrative is neither fresh nor funny enough to be a hit with the romantic comedy crowd.

Have you seen For Love or Money? What did you think? Let us know in the comments.

For Love or Money will be available on Digital download in the US on July 8th 2019.