Disasters happen all too frequently around our planet. Considering how long Hollywood has been a thriving metropolis, it would seem the money moguls there should have a surefire way to spot a disaster when they see it. Not so for All About Steve, a film that makes you want to leave more every minute it’s on screen – which also raises questions why the wonderful and talented Sandra Bullock decided to make this film.
Mary Horowitz (Bullock) is a crossword-puzzle creator for the Sacramento Herald. Clues to her outrageous personality surface immediately when she brings in samples of new puzzles that might have been thought up by a third-grader. When her boss explains to her they will not work, her reaction signifies attests that Mary is in a world of her own.
Things aren’t any better at home, where Mary lives with her parents. When they set her up on a blind date, she spends long minutes unleashing run-on sentences and babbling like a brook to a total stranger about why she won’t go on the date. That’s the problem with Mary. A brilliant cruciverbalist – a crossword puzzle constructor – she’s able to inform everyone she meets about any word applying to their life as well as its origin and what people in Bora Bora might think about it.
Sandra Bullock & Bradley Cooper
Mary finally decides to go on the date and dresses modestly, wearing her red patent leather boots which she wears everyday, everywhere. When she walks down the stairs and sees Steve (Bradley Cooper), a handsome news cameraman, she reacts as only Mary would. Running upstairs, she returns half clad and even calls attention to her sexy self as her parents watch with eerie glee from the doorway.
The first five minutes in Steve’s van begins with typical blind date conversation, and then Mary jumps on Steve’s lap and begins to seduce him. She acts so crazy he’s actually panicky, and gets saved when he’s called to cover a breaking news story in another state.
Mary, who decides she loves Steve, begins a three-state stalking journey that has Steve caught in her web of bizarreness. Another of her insane traits is that wherever the gleeful Mary goes she’s overly excited, flapping her arms like a bird and stomping her feet in place as fast as she can. The first time she does this is funny; the rest of the time, it’s annoying.
Bullock said she formed her character on several things, one of them a three-and-a half-year-old. That’s certainly what Mary acts like throughout this film. Judging her as an adult, she would be classified as unstable. Why would Steve be interested in her? And in fact he’s not. He tells her at each news spot to go home and leave him alone. But his on-air reporter, Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church, Imagine That), wants to torture Steve, so he keeps telling Mary that Steve really loves her. As the three of them tussle from one major news story after another, Angus (Ken Jeong, The Hangover), their producer, tries to keep them focused.
Thomas Haden Church, Bradley Cooper, Ken Jeong
In addition to the depiction of Mary as such a horrible character and the implausible reactions of others in this film, the logistics of many scenes don’t’ add up. For example, how does Mary get across two states in 24 hours with no car? Or how does she happen to have a match for a lantern in an abandoned mine shaft she falls into? Or why don’t teachers realize there’s one missing child among those rescued who also fell into the mine?
Luckily for Bullock and Cooper, All About Steve was made before their latest films – The Proposal and The Hangover, respectively – in which they redeem themselves. Bullock has entertained us with so many diverse roles, but even her talent couldn’t overcome this very bad script by Kim Barker (License To Wed).
While leaving the theater, I couldn’t help thinking that if you put a marshmallow on top of a pile of cooked spinach, it’s still not a dessert. All About Steve is no comedy. Watching it was painstaking. It just might be the worst film of 2009.
Photo credits: Suzanne Tenner / 20th Century Fox
