Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper falter in ‘All About
Steve’
‘All About Steve’ starring Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper and
Thomas Haden Church
Sandra Bullock should have stuck to one romantic comedy for the
summer season. She starred in
”
The Proposal,
”
which came out a few months ago with Ryan Reynolds, as a book
publisher who gets engaged to her assistant in exchange for a green
card. The movie was predictable, but had plenty of funny moments in
it.
Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper falter in ‘All About Steve’
‘All About Steve’ starring Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper and Thomas Haden Church
Sandra Bullock should have stuck to one romantic comedy for the summer season. She starred in “The Proposal,” which came out a few months ago with Ryan Reynolds, as a book publisher who gets engaged to her assistant in exchange for a green card. The movie was predictable, but had plenty of funny moments in it.
Last weekend, her film “All About Steve” opened. The movie was not that predictable, but unfortunately most of the funny bits made it into the previews and viewers were left with few laughs in between. In it, Bullock stars as a quirky cruciverbalist – a word only a cruciverbalist would use which means one who does crossword puzzles – and most of the movie was a bit puzzling for viewers.
Bullock plays Mary Horowitz, a fiercely intelligent woman who devotes most of her time to creating crossword puzzles for the local newspaper. She is socially awkward, and fills her conversations with random facts that make it hard for her to really connect with anyone. Basically she is just downright annoying. She is even ridiculed by a group of 8-year-olds at a career day, for living with her parents and being single.
In fact, her love life is so forlorn that her parents have set her up on a blind date. She is unsure about the date at first, but that all changes when she gets her first glimpse of Steve’s (Bradley Cooper) bright blue eyes and perfectly white teeth. After just one look, she decides to throw her all into the date – meaning she changes from a knee-length skirt to a mini one and puts on some lip gloss.
Everything seems to go well as they walk to the car, with Steve doing most of the talking. Mary can’t contain herself for long, though, and she soon starts kissing him in the car before they even make it out of the driveway. Steve is into it – until Mary starts talking and talking and talking. Her quirkiness comes out and is clearly a turn off for Steve who grabs for his phone and feigns a call from work to get away from Mary.
He makes one mistake, though. He says he wishes she could come with him, but obviously she can’t since she has a job. It’s the typical guy escape clause along the lines of “I had a great time. I’ll call you,” and then never, ever following up.
Mary leaves, thinking the date went well while Steve leaves thinking he dodged a bullet. Mary’s obsession with Steve, though, leads her to lose her job when she creates a crossword puzzle entitled “All About Steve.” The clues are all things about Steve – his eye color, how his car smells, and on and on. The editor at the paper she works for is furious that she would do something like that since it is a puzzle that readers obviously can’t complete. And I know from experience that those who love crossword puzzles take them very seriously. So Mary finds herself out of a job and decides to find Steve on the road.
Steve is a cameraman for a cable news network. He travels around the country with newsman Hartman (Thomas Haden Church) and producer Angus (Ken Jeong). Somehow Mary just knows where he will be based on whatever big news is breaking – a hostage situation in an Old Western theme park, two separated parents fighting over whether to remove a baby’s third leg, or a hurricane off the coast of Texas.
Mary is naive and Hartman, who is angling for an anchor desk job, finds her random facts useful for his live stand-ups on camera. So he tells her that Steve really likes her and she should keep following him everywhere they go, even if Steve tells her to go away and says she is psycho. Of course, that’s exactly what Steve does, and based on Hartman’s comments Mary continues to follow them around to disaster after disaster. Hartman gets his quirky facts, and Mary never gets that she is being used.
The movie is hardly an enjoyable watch. The characters are not believable. Their actions are ridiculous, and even Bullock’s charm and Cooper’s good looks can’t rescue the mediocre plot. Bullock has had much better turns, including 1992’s “Love Potion No. 9” in which she plays Diane Farrow, a super geeky scientist. She and costar Tate Donovan (who plays Paul Matthews) have much more chemistry than Bullock and Cooper, perhaps because they both play biochemists with a love potion that makes them irresistible to the opposite sex.
Skip “All About Steve” and wait for the next Bullock romantic comedy, or just rent an old one.
