All About Steve

It can't be long before there's a backlash against the hate that's flowed in the direction of this Sandra Bullock-starring romantic comedy.

After all, can she really have delivered a Razzie-worthy performance in the same year as The Blind Side's Oscar-winning turn? And did All About Steve really deserve a total of five Razzie nominations, for every major category? Does it truly suck that much?

Yes, yes, and definitely yes.

With a movie this bad it's hard to know where to begin. Presenting us with an (im)perfect storm of poor acting, negligible narrative coherence, one-dimensional characters, and hardly any actual jokes, All About Steve might just be the world's worst high concept movie. And that's really saying something.

Bullock stars as crossword writer Mary Horowitz, although you'd be forgiven for thinking that she'd just stepped out of a pantomime. Mary isn't so much a character as she is a walking skit, and while a two-minute sketch might have stretched the joke to breaking point, this 99-minute movie doesn't rest until it's stretched it around the block several times and tied it into a particularly messy bow.

Mary is apparently extremely intelligent, but we see little evidence of this as she totters and blunders through All About Steve's endlessly dumb script. She has an encyclopedic knowledge, which helps with writing her crosswords - but it isn't quite so useful in everyday life, as she lets out an unending stream of unconnected facts and figures to anyone within earshot.

She's a schoolboy's sketch of a scatty professor - and walking proof that being funny relies on more than simply repeating the same joke over and over for almost two hours.

When Mary's parents set her up on a blind date she doesn't hold out much hope, but she's bowled over when she meets suave TV cameraman Steve Muller (Bradley Cooper). Steve has to leave urgently to cover a news story, so Mary decides to make her next crossword entirely about her new crush...

Yes, this is as ridiculous as it sounds. It's no great surprise when Mary gets fired for her stupidity, and it's just remarkable that she isn't commited to a mental hospital too.

She then proceeds to stalk Steve across the length of the country, as he travels from assignment to assignment with disgruntled reporter Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church). The situations get sillier and sillier (if that's at all possible), until the script has little option but to throw Mary down an abandoned mineshaft. By this stage you'll be wishing that they'd leave her down there.

It really is hard to overemphasize the lack of jokes in All About Steve, and for a movie that's this intentionally wacky the utter paucity of laugh-worthy moments feels like a curiously impressive achievement. Most fast food commercials have a higher laugh count. The one saving grace is Thomas Haden Church's blustering TV reporter, and even he would be overlooked in even the most mediocre of screen comedies. Here, he shines.

If you now have the impression that All About Steve is so bad that it might actually be worth checking out, then forget it. It's so misguided that it's not even amusingly bad - just juvenile, dull, and occasionally teetering on the brink of incoherence.

As for Sandra Bullock's performance, it simply adds an extra layer of nonsense to a movie that's already drowning in it. In comparison The Proposal looks like When Harry Met Sally. And The Blind Side feels like a distant miracle.

1/5

If your partner or best friend is really word-nerdy and irritating in a compulsive/repulsive way, invite them out to see this movie! They will love it!

One Word Review: UNFUNNY

All About Steve is all about (apparently) our natural compulsion to fill empty spaces. In this movie, this explains people’s fascination with crossword puzzles and, of course, Hollywood’s fascination with theater seats. So, we get movies like All About Steve which, if your goal was to fill those empty spaces in the multiplex, you’d get a good script, hire great actors and set them loose in settings and conflicts we would find compelling, interesting and entertaining. However, like the main character in this movie Mary Horowitz, Hollywood prefers to package actors ill-suited to their roles, make them perform the most irritating antics possible with no understandable motivation and unite them against their will by threatening handicapped children with dark, smothering death so we will laugh our butts off those precious seats.

Worst of all, beyond the tasteless plot and compulsive stalking of poor Steve, this movie does the worst crime of all: it is not funny. A romantic comedy has a formula of boy meets girl, they split and then re-unite at the end credits. In between, we get misunderstandings, mix-ups and miscommunication (the 3Ms of romantic comedy) all designed to keep the two lovers apart for at least an hour of screen time.  Without giving away the ending, although please email me if you want to know how it ends, we have only two parts of the formula: boy meets girl and the 3Ms.

In between, we have the drudgery of crossword puzzle humor, red boots jokes, are you going to rape me jokes, why is my career in the toilet jokes and kids with three legs jokes. As Steve is a cameraman for a news network, we get a string of disasters as settings, metaphors for the ending of this Mary and Steve “relationship”. These disasters also showcase the insensitivity of news professionals, the crass stupidity of disaster groupies and the low tolerance people have for anyone who is irritatingly different.

If the above description sparks your funny bone and makes you want to dash out and see this movie, think of a four letter word starting with “s” and ending in “p” with “t” and “o” in between. Perhaps in the hands of a gifted satirist, this might have comic potential, but you are not anywhere near hands like that steering this movie into your local theater.

Sandra Bullock plays Mary and produced All About Steve. She thus has the distinction of being irritating in front and behind the camera at the same time.

The Story

The story starts with a crossword puzzle, red boots and a nerdy woman with no life who works at the local paper producing the weekly puzzle. But she has dreams, yes, dreams of a daily crossword puzzle. She has a blind date where she jumps the poor guy in his truck, rips off clothes and tries to make out only to have his phone ring and off he goes. She follows, after losing her job by making a crossword puzzle “all about Steve” (his eye color, his job, etc.).

She obsessively talks her way across the country chasing Steve covering the three-legged baby story, the Texas hurricane story and finally, the deaf kids in the mine story. The mine story turns into a “save Mary” story when she falls into the hole, discovers the abandoned child and waits for a rescue. The ground around the mine hole is “unstable”, so a crane can’t lower a cable. There are too many power lines for a helicopter so everyone stands around (maybe twenty feet away from the hole and all that treacherously unstable ground) wondering how in the world can Mary be saved. She saves herself, the child and the reporter who stupidly jumps into the hole with a fire hose attached to – wait for it – nothing.

Once she is rescued, she realizes her compulsion for Steve was really her attempt to be normal and that’s not what she truly wants. No, she wants to be socially ostracized and language-obsessed, as long as she can find another like-minded wacko to join her. Yes, true love is blind to obsessive-compulsive disorders. She sums up her life’s learning, after a dark night in the mine as “don’t change, find someone like you”.  We end with everyone safe as Nikka Costa sings the bouncy theme song, “Everybody’s Got Their Something”.  Oh yeah, they got something all right: my money for the movie ticket.

The Genre

All About Steve is a comedy, perhaps a romantic comedy but in genre only. If you rate a comedy based on laughs, this doesn’t quality. If there was anything remotely funny, you saw it in the trailer. Save your money and go out for pizza or drinks or see Inglourious Basterds again. Hey, buy a paper and do the crossword puzzle. That would be more fun than this movie.

One hopes this doesn’t harm Bradley Cooper’s career as he has a movie star smile and a likeable quality you want to root for. He has the unfortunate duty here to be the straight man for Sandra Bullock and perhaps this is the dues he has to pay before launching himself into the upper stratosphere of super stardom. Or maybe this was his big chance and now he’s royally screwed. I think The Hangover will define him and, with luck, no one will remember his lead role as Steve.

The Overall Quality

All About Steve is sad on so many levels, starting with the lame main character of Mary. The writer couldn’t deliver a credible “window” character for her (someone she can talk to and reveal information the audience needs to know) so Mary talks to her pet hamster, Carol. Later, her window character is a deaf, mute child left behind in the mine disaster. Help. I try not to be cynical but when the mine disaster swallows the deaf kids, I was thinking, why do the kids have to be deaf? Then, when Mary falls in and finds the child left behind, it became clear. The kid had to be deaf to allow Mary to talk non-stop to someone so she can find her true life meaning without seeming to talk to the mine walls and sound like a lunatic. These are lazy window characters, showing the lack of imagination behind the creators of this movie.

The acting is forced and overblown. The actors must have known the material was lame and they did their best to “sell” the story. I assume they had a pot of money at the end of each day for the actor who could pull off looking the stupidest in their scenes without breaking character. Thomas Haden Church is brilliant as a self-absorbed reporter, but it is not a real person and thus, a cop-out performance.

Bradley Cooper, hot from The Hangover, has little to do except defend a normal “guy” reaction to an obsessive stalker hanging around his workplace. There is no love interest for him to play against, only an impending sense of doom if they ever found themselves alone together.

Ultimately, you are left with the sense that the filmmakers thought it was funny to screw with disturbed people, hold them up for ridicule and avoid any honest emotional responses when a lame joke could be inserted instead.

One character in the movie is an apple head sculptor, no doubt inspired by the apple heads that made this movie.

Movie/Market Analysis

MarketBOB’s sentiment indicators, the GQS (Genre, Quality, Story) make All About Steve a screaming BEAR movie. This decision is for failing grades across all indicators. It sucks for quality and the story is just not funny, the worst sin of any comedy.

Any one who paid good money to sit through All About Steve was ripped off. They will carry this feeling over into their money decisions this week, feeling those empty spaces in their wallets caused by this movie.

Last updated: 2010-03-27 18:09:13 by user08

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper
Comedy, 2009 (Rated PG 13)

Mary (Bullock) is a talkative, quirky, and too smart for her own good crossword puzzle creator. She goes out on one single kind of date with Steve (Cooper) and her oddness is immediately apparent to him causing him to run for the hills. The thing he doesn't understand about Mary is that if she wants you she will follow. Steve finds himself stalked all over as he works as a TV Channel camera man and they find themselves in all kinds of unusual situations.

• Mary is so obnoxious that within the first 10 minutes I kind of wanted to shut the movie off just so I didn't have to hear her voice anymore.
• I found myself asking repeatedly "What in the heck is wrong with her?"
• Kudos to Bullock for totally embracing this unique weird character.
• It is a funny, fun movie and has a very cheesy ending.

Just Me

There’s something about Mary Magdalene Horowitz. Other than her name.

Is it Asperger’s syndrome? Or simply a severe case of uber-geekiness? Whatever.

In “All About Steve,” which stars Sandra Bullock, the Mary in question is a brainiac crossword creator, whose verbal IQ far outweighs her people skills. She doesn’t converse. She monologues. She’s a master of trivia but just doesn’t get human relationships.

Enter Steve (Bradley Cooper) and let the fun begin.

“All about Steve” is a celebration of eccentricity. It poses the question: Isn’t being “normal” grossly overrated?

Critics didn’t care for the flick. One called it “a grimly unfunny comedy.” But the Movie Slut wasn’t the only one laughing out loud at the multiplex. The movie isn’t pitch perfect but the off moments are few. And you’ve got to love the quirkiness of the crossword puzzle as metaphor for life.

Look for an excellent supporting performance by Thomas Haden Church and some unexpected cameos. No, the Movie Slut won’t give them away. Even she has her standards. And do perk up your ears for some hysterically funny musical moments.

See you at the movies, The Movie Slut

Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock) is the crossword puzzle writer for the Sacramento newspaper. Brainy but reclusive, she is so driven to create good work that her life is consumed with writing and research. Not only that, she is now bunking with her parents, for her old apartment has to be "fumigated". Naturally, her parents want Mary to experience love, marriage, and children so they keep trying to get her out of the house. Setting her up with the son of close friends, Mary reluctantly agrees to go out with Steve (Bradley Cooper). But, oh joy! Steve is a looker and has an intriguing job as the cameraman for a cable news reporter, Hartman (Thomas Haden Church). Mary likes, likes, likes what she sees. But, since the puzzle-writer won't stop talking and makes heavy romantic advances, Steve gets spooked only minutes into their first date and he bolts, citing his need to get to a new work assignment. But, Mary is dizzy in love. She bumbles her next crossword duties, gets fired and, suddenly, decides to follow Steve to his current location, and the next one, too. Steve is horrified and tries to get rid of her but Hartman tells Mary, privately, that Steve is secretly happy she is there and that she should not get discouraged in her pursuit of love. Its a puzzlement! Will Mary get her heart's desire? In the world of romantic comedies, this one is an odd duck. It is interesting and has many good elements but doesn't achieve overall success. However, its weaknesses do not include the cast, for Bullock, Cooper, and especially Haden Church, are great. All of the supporting cast members are very fine, too. In fact, its the actors' skills that elevate the film beyond its script and tentative direction. Yes, it tries to make some good statements about individuality, media hype, and the like. But, it never totally succeeds in getting its points across with aplomb. On a lesser note, the costumes and sets are quite nice indeed. In short, if you love Bullock, Cooper, Haden Church or quirky movies, you might give this one a whirl. Sometimes an interesting "failure" is more fun than a slick but pointless flick.

Vincent Snavely

When there is talk about America’s sweetheart, not enough mention is given to the woman that truly epitomizes that title. All About Steve demonstrate how much of a sweetheart Bullock really is.
To my knowledge, I haven’t had any stalkers, so I can’t relate to Bradley Cooper’s character here. That is one of he problems with this film. Cooper is one of te stars of the film, yet his character is very…gee, I dunno…wooden. Emotion is shown, mostly in the form of paranoia and care and concern after the film’s denouma.
Sandra Bullock really sells this character. It is quite obvious that she got into this role. It is really a shame that everyone bashes this film and says that it is her worst performance. I don’t understand why. I’ve seem worse from her. The part that did get on my nerves, though, was how she couldn’t seem to pick up on the signals from DJ Qualls’ character. Even I could see that this guy was in love with her!
DJ Qualls and Katy Nixon make a couple of good secondary characters, although both are tragically underused. I had just wrapped my mind around the fact that they just weren’t going to get much airtime when the cave-in scene stuff  happened. That just seemed like the perfect place for them to open up and shine through while our main character is down a hole.
Thomas Haden Church seem to really relish and shine in these roles that allow his to play the not-so-bad bad guy. That is the guy who you think is cool when you first meet him, only to find out his true intentions.
The sign of a good romantic comedy is does it make you laugh as well as feel for the lead character (typically a female). All About Steve does just that, all while being accused of ruining Sandra Bullock’s career. I don’t understand the hate towards this picture, other than it is being compare to her Oscar-winning follow-up The Blind Side. The comparisons are really unnecessary, as people don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the two roles are as opposite sides of the spectrum as possible.
Having said all that, I did come away from this film with a feeling of warmth. This is just a feel-good movie that is totally getting a bum rap. Please take the time to watch and see for yourself.

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