At first glance, FOR LOVE OR MONEY looks like a holdover from the greed-filled 1980s, a last gasp glorification of Reagan/Bush era yuppiedom. The surprise is that it's actually an amusing, if occasionally formulaic, comedy.
Michael J. Fox is Doug Ireland, a cunning-yet-lovable concierge at New York's posh Bradbury Hotel. Doug knows all the angles, from where to get jewelry wholesale to how to procure hard-to-get theater tickets, but he doesn't quite have the knack for romance. Andy (Gabrielle Anwar), the department
store salesgirl on whom he has a crush, humors him but won't agree to a date. David has two dreams: to win Andy, and have his own hotel.
When mogul Christian Hanover (Anthony Higgins) arrives at the Bradbury, Doug sees his golden opportunity. He hopes to score points when he's entrusted with keeping an eye on Hanover's mistress, whom he's distressed to learn is Andy. Doug is now torn between his attraction to Andy, who he thinks
is being used by Hanover, and his attempts to keep the financier happy, so he will back him in his hotel deal. Much of Doug's job involves covering for Hanover, filling in for him when he can't make a date with Andy, or making sure she doesn't follow him to his lush summer home where he's throwing
an important party. Eventually Doug learns that Hanover is not only using him as well, but is planning to purchase the land Doug had envisioned for his hotel in order to build his own palatial establishment. Thanks to an unexpected ally, Doug foils Hanover and wins Andy, who realizes that Doug was
the guy for her all along.
To the degree that it succeeds (the last half feels a bit forced), FOR LOVE OR MONEY does so on the strength of Fox's snappy performance. Not unlike the young Jimmy Cagney, he hardly stops to breathe in some scenes, notably in the sequence--played like an elaborate three-card-monte game--in
which he and the other local concierges buy and sell theater tickets from each other. There are some original comedic touches (Fox's sparse city apartment includes several fishtanks full of Chinese duck sauce packets), and the action moves along so quickly that one doesn't pay much attention to
the plot's plausibility. In any event, it's no more unbelievable than some of the classic screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s, which it resembles in its pacing and colorful characters. The hotel is stocked with several, including the ancient bellhop (Fyvush Finkel of TV's "Picket Fences") who
prides himself on being able to take every piece of a guest's luggage to the room in one trip. Michael Tucker ("LA Law") has a small part as a naive out-of-towner trying to rejuvenate his marriage, and Fox's trip with him to the wholesale jewelry exchange is one of the film's highlights, with Fox
and the dealer exchanging insults while each attempts to get a better price. Gabrielle Anwar, though sometimes a bit too childlike, gives a refreshingly low-key performance, and her natural chemistry with Fox adds to the film's appeal, helping to raise it above its fairly familiar elements.
(Profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
