Yet another film that I only became aware of due to the Razzies, All About Steve is a notorious stinker (allegedly) that I always wanted to see because of Sandra Bullock having the good grace and humour to turn up at the ceremony "rewarding" it and doing her best to entertainingly defend it. And, hey, maybe it wouldn't be THAT bad.
All About Steve really IS that bad. Sandra Bullock plays Mary Horowitz, a young woman who creates crossword puzzle for a newspaper. She then goes on one date with Steve (Bradley Cooper), a news cameraman, and becomes absolutely obsessed with him. This leads to her pursuing him across the country, much to the amusement of his colleagues. Mary has a way with people around her though, thanks to her good nature and eccentricity that people respond to. Apparently.
Writer Kim Barker has three projects to their name. This is the second. Director Phil Traill, on the other hand, has managed to create a body of work that provided much more distance between himself and this travesty. And it is a travesty, although it's hard to figure out what else it is meant to be. If it's a twisted rom-com then it lacks both the rom and the com. If it's a dark comedy then it lacks both the darkness and the comedy. If it's supposed to be some commentary on what happens when people without a filter are thrown into the middle of the general population, presenting some kind of "idiot savant" able to teach others a la Being There and Forrest Gump, then it also fails in that regard. No good points are made here, and we're left with a character study of people who are poorly-written and completely uninteresting, once you get beyond the "quirkiness" of someone who is actually on the spectrum of autism.
As unlikely as it seems, there may have been some way to make this a good movie. I think the screenplay would have needed a complete overhaul though, with Bullock and Cooper constantly thrown together more by coincidence than any scheming. It might also have benefited from different leads.
I really like Bullock. I would consider myself a full member of the Sandra Bullock fan club. How dedicated am I to her career? Well . . . I just watched All About Steve. This is easily one of the worst performances I have seen from her though, and the way she portrays Mary is almost offensively bad. There are times when she's only a couple of steps away from being the female equivalent of Simple Jack (see Tropic Thunder for that reference point). Cooper can do cocky and smarmy, but he doesn't have the extra softness required to offset the mean side of his character. At least there's some fun to be had with Thomas Haden Church (a smug TV reporter), Ken Jeong, DJ Qualls, Katy Mixon Greer, M. C. Gainey, Holmes Osborne, and, as Mary's parents, Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman.
Despite my overwhelming criticism of this movie, I will say that it's almost saved by the supporting cast and the third act moments that try hard to show some kind of closure for both Mary and Steve. Some lessons are learned, I think, and it would work in a standard movie way if viewers had grown to care about the central character. Very few will care though, which kind of undermines the ending.
Like so many similarly maligned films, this is far from the worst of the worst. It's also deserving of a lot of the mockery and disdain it has received though.
3/10
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