Until this afternoon I've been so hot for Sandra Bullock I'd drive fifty miles to watch a silent movie of her ironing bedsheets. But having just sat through her latest movie ALL ABOUT STEVE I've downsized that maximum distance to ten feet (and she'd have to be ironing underwear).
ALL ABOUT STEVE seriously challenges "Miss Congeniality 2" for the title of worst Sandra Bullock film ever. This alleged rom-com is a witless, lame ragbag of slapdash cliches devoid of originality, humour or entertainment value.
Ms Bullock has built her career playing lovable klutzy outsiders who overcome all manner of (usually) self-induced adversities to triumph personally and professionally. In the best of these ("Two Weeks Notice", "Miss Congeniality") her social ineptness has been endearing and often adorable but here it's just plain disturbing. Her character, Mary Horowitz, is unintentionally borderline autistic. She's very intelligent but totally clueless when it comes to developing personal relationships or appreciating how her obsession with her job (she creates crosswords for a small Sacramento newspaper) appears to others. At one point she actually jots down her editor's advice to "be normal" as if that's the only way she's going to remember it.
When she develops a fixation with tv news channel cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper) after a disastrous blind date and starts following him across country from one assignment to the next the effect is scary. Mary (who constantly refers to herself in the third person) is more stalker than smitten, and completely unconvincing to boot. Bullock fails to imbue Mary with even an ounce of credibility as a character, settling instead for a weird mix of childlike innocence, demented schoolgirl and overage virgin. Imagine watching someone with no concept of the meaning of the phrase "to act" being instructed to act. To be fair to Ms Bullock her performance is no worse than the script or Phil Traill's direction, both of which tarnish the description pedestrian with their lazy and total lack of effort and imagination.
Rom-coms don't make any claim to be realistic nor do audiences expect the story that unfolds to be completely plausible or even likely. But it would be nice to be offered the possibility that it might happen. A token gesture in the direction of believability rarely harms an audience's ability to enjoy. For example, showing or perhaps simply suggesting that the CNN-style cable news channel Steve works for employs more than one cameraman and reporter rather than having him and egotistical journo Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church) as the sole team dashing from one breaking story to the next across vast distances apparently at the speed of light.
As star and producer of ALL ABOUT STEVE my beloved Sandy has only herself to blame for this execrable mess. What was she thinking?! Was she thinking? If even there was an argument for installing a fast forward button in the arm of each cinema seat this film is it. It's ninety six minutes of my life that I'll never recover. Do her and yourself a huge favour and remember her as she was, and not what she's become.
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