Film Reviews

All About Steve

• Rating:
• Director: Phil Traill
• Starring: Bradley Cooper
• Details: US/98mins 12A

Having sat through this horribly ill-conceived comedy, about a woman who becomes obsessed with a camera man after one date, I'm convinced there was a mutiny in the editing room. Underneath all of the poorly timed, horribly written, clumsy attempts at comedy, there is actually a deeply affecting drama about a woman suffering from a socially functional mental illness. Sure, she might be inexplicably hot, with a rain man-like amount of knowledge on extraneous subjects, but she just wants to find love, damn it. And If Bradley Cooper's dreamboat doesn't realise that she's the one for him, then a scary amount of persistence will just have to change his mind.
Bullock plays Mary Horowitz, a single forty-something still living at home with her parents. A bit of a kooky sort, she works for a local newspaper coming up with crossword puzzles. When her parents set her up with Cooper's titular Steve on a blind date, she goes a little bit Fatal Attraction - only instead of boiling his family pet in a pot, she stabs him with rainbows. As Steve travels across the country for work, Mary insists on following him - despite his protests at every opportunity.
It really does sound like anything but a comedy, yet that's what the filmmakers tried to do with that setup - make people laugh. Even with the combined talents of Cooper and Bullock, two stars with proven pedigree and boundless charisma, this is cringe-worthy stuff. Bullock must shoulder her fair share of the blame as a producer, but no one really escapes this embarrassing debacle unscathed. Both stars will hope their next respective hits will be big enough to wipe this from the memory of movie goers.
There lies a masochist within some movie lovers that can force them to watch a film that is so bad it can be seen as somehow entertaining; who knows, in a couple of decades, once the mental scars have healed, All About Steve could be that film. Right now, it stands as one of the most awkward comedies in recent memory.

Review by Mike Sheridan