All About Steve (**)
Directed by:Starring: Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, Thomas Haden Church, DJ Qualls
Seen: January 30th 2010
** Out of ****
When you are convinced about someone being your true love, you have to chase it down. But only to a point. In All About Steve Sandra Bullock plays the role of Mary Horowitz, a savant of sorts, but mostly a social outcast. She is a cruciverbalist, or to put it in layman’s terms, someone who compiles crossword puzzles, and this is made easier for her because of her extremely extensive but trivial general knowledge. She can never just allow a conversation to go its way or enjoy a quiet moment, she has to fill every second with information – a natural compulsion, she claims at one stage.
Mary is in her 40’s, but she still lives with her parents, using her apartment’s fumigation as an excuse. When her parents set her up on a blind date, she reluctantly accepts, and when her mother comes to her room to warn her that he is hot she voices the hope that it is not only on the inside. When she sees Steve (Cooper) she is instantly smitten, and she takes almost anything he says as a love pledge. To such a shocking degree, in fact, that he fakes a phone call to ditch her less than 10 minutes into the date.
Steve is a cameraman for newsman Hartman Hughes (Church), and she decides to follow news events in order to follow/stalk Steve. While Steve can’t do enough to get away from her or avoid her altogether, Hartman can’t lure her in quickly enough, telling her that Steve is in denial about her and that he actually loves her. This, as well as the general way the story unfolds, cause quite a few laughs in an all-round feel-good story eventually coming out with the message that you should just be yourself.
While All About Steve is by no means a very good film (it has in some circles been voted worst movie of 2009), it is entertaining and amusing if seen in the right frame of mind, both in Mary’s eccentric insanity and in Hartman’s strange motivations for Mary to pursue Steve. I saw the movie with my parents, and the three of us certainly enjoyed this bit of popcorn entertainment. Some moments even reminded me of the monkey with the thought translator in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, also called Steve, as it was delivered with close to the same insanity levels. Bradley Cooper is growing in stature, and he is fully at home in this role. The supporting cast are not over-utilised but they all still add good value to the movie. There are some moments that makes you wonder whether to laugh or be shocked, but they do not detract from the idea of the movie, they enhance it, in fact. I will probably forget most of this movie by next week (even though some jokes may stick), but right now, three days after seeing it, it still brings a smile to my face – a perfect low-maintenance movie then, fun, but not very much else.
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