A few months ago I discussed Sandra Bullock's return to the mainstream in her 2009 hit The Proposal. Couple that film with her Oscar winning turn in The Blind Side and it made for a 1-2 punch that critics and fans alike raved about. However, while that makes for a fun comeback story- it's not a totally accurate one. In the middle of those two films was the film All About Steve which did not do really well at the box office. It's a good thing too because it could've brought all of Bullock's momentum to a dead stop. This is not a good film in any way, shape, or form.
Bullock plays Mary Horowitz who is an eccentric crossword puzzle maker for the Sacramento Herald. She is single, awkward, socially maladjusted, and possibly slightly autistic although that last one is never explicitly mentioned in any way. She goes to a local school on career day and the kids begin making fun of her for her career choice and for not having a boyfriend. Feeling depressed and beaten down she is not looking forward to the blind date her parents have set up for her. When her date Steve arrives (played by Bradley Cooper) she is immediately attracted to him and changes outfits into something more revealing. They get in the car for their date and she jumps him right away. Being a guy he is all for this until she continues to talk throughout the process causing him to fake a phone call to get away. She goes home in love and puts together a crossword puzzle that has nothing but clues about her blind date. This gets her fired from the Herald and she decides to take Steve up on his offer to go on the road with him (he says this when he is trying to get away) and sets out to find him. That set-up may not sound great but there is some potential there. That portion of the film runs about 20 minutes. The film is another 65 minutes long after that.
From there the film spirals into a confusing mess. You're not sure if Mary is in on the joke ever, and if she isn't then it isn't really nice to be laughing at her throughout. Steve is a cameraman for a cable news network and his reporter (Thomas Haden Church) thinks this is the height of comedy so he keeps telling Mary where they are going to be next. Mary blindly follows along to each stop and it makes you feel like Church's character is bullying Mary in a way. He's dragging her along because he knows she has feelings for Steve and will do whatever they ask her to do in a means to help.
At one stop Mary meets up with two others to create an oddball trio (played by DJ Qualls and Katy Mixon). Qualls character sculpts famous people out of apples, and Mixon's character- well they never explain what she does but she seems sweet but naive all while wearing skimpy clothing- not that I'm complaining about that with her. The three of them partner up and begin following the news van around the country. At this point it's unclear what the film wants to be. It's played as a comedy but being stalked around the country by someone isn't something that feels "ha ha" funny. Furthermore, every time the action cuts back to Mary and her crew it's played as if it is a Saturday Night Live skit before getting back to the other side of the story. It creates a jarring narrative throughout that ultimately renders the film not enjoyable.
The biggest problem here though is the script written by Kim Barker who also wrote License to Wed which makes her 0 for 2 in my book. There are a multitude of issues here. For one, every event in the story revolves around some goofy coincidence. At about the hour mark it feels like this whole film is slowing down and then a bunch of deaf kids fall into a well that happens the minute they run over it. Let me say that again- a group of kids are running through a field and when they all hit one spot it collapses and they are all stuck. Why does this happen? Why is it deaf kids? How does something like that just happen? There is no good answer, and this film isn't done well enough to be doing this as absurdist comedy.
The biggest problem with the script though is that it takes two charming leads and strips them of all their charm. Bullock is turned into an annoying character doing a bad Lucille Ball impression. In a quest to make her as quirky as possible they hide her face under a bad haircut and ask her to do as many things as possible to not let her natural ability shine through. On top of that they turn Cooper into a guy who is sort of picking on Mary the whole time and it creates zero chemistry between the two of them. They spend too much time trying to play up the eccentricities of Mary's character to invest in the thing Bullock does so well- which is creating a character that is easy to root for. Here she is easy to root against, and that's clearly not what the film wants you to feel.
Bad idea and execution in every sense of the word.
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