All About Steve (2009)

I’ve enjoyed solving crosswords and other word puzzles since I was a kid. I’m no professional solver — well, except for the time I won $3,800 as a contestant on the game show Merv Griffin’s Crosswords — nor am I so obsessed that I work on such puzzles every day, though I do keep a puzzle magazine in my briefcase for traveling or other occasions where I have to sit around and wait for something. But heaven help me, I must be more obsessive about them than I thought, for as I watched the opening credits of All About Steve, which are displayed like crossword puzzle boxes being filled in, it struck me immediately that the three groups of horizontal boxes which house the title were incorrectly numbered; no real, logically constructed crossword puzzle could have those words in the clue-number configuration shown. So the credits were not made by a real cruciverbalist (that’s the obscure crossword puzzle maker’s term for an obscure crossword puzzle maker). Trouble is, I don’t think the movie was written by a real cruciverbalist, either. In fact, for a movie that’s supposed to be about a smart woman in a mentally challenging vocation, it’s much more mentally challenged than challenging.

Sandra Bullock is cute, has an attractive smile, is not afraid to take a pratfall or look ridiculous, and has occasional moments of good comic timing. I’ll give her credit for those things, but she made me wince throughout this movie because she’s in her mid-40s now, and seems much too old for her role as a brainy but socially immature crossword constructor for the “Sacramento Herald” newspaper. The exposition vividly demonstrates how detached this poorly scripted movie is from any semblance of reality — you know it has to be a fictional newspaper, because it appears to be thriving. And she only makes one puzzle a week for the paper, yet this is supposedly her livelihood — even a kid at a school’s “Career Day” calls her out on that. And her never-seen apartment is “being fumigated” so she’s living with her parents (Howard Hesseman and Beth Grant in underutilized roles) in what appears to be the “Brady Bunch” house. That cheesy “vintage” ambiance extends to her Twiggy-wannabe wardrobe, as she favors pink lipstick and bright red knee-high go-go boots (her explanation about these boots, late in the film, is one of the dumbest lines I’ve ever heard). She prattles endlessly to anyone within earshot about obscure quotes and mundane facts (all waaay overwritten, as though the screenwriter copied and pasted her dialogue from an encyclopedia), so she’s somewhere on the scale between “endearingly eccentric” (how the filmmakers want us to view her) and “crazy stalker” (which is how the titular Steve views her).

Steve (Bradley Cooper) and Mary (Bullock) are set up on a blind date mutually arranged by their parents (what is this, Fiddler On The Roof II?), which turns into a brief groping session in his car while still parked in front of her parents’ house, until her incessant chatter makes him find a way to weasel out of the date and leave her on the curb in the rain. Being a socially maladjusted brainiac, Mary thinks he really likes her and doesn’t comprehend the reality of his brush-off. So, despite knowing this guy for less than 15 minutes, she manages to create an entire Steve-themed crossword (hence the film title — this movie’s really all about Sandra’s character, not Steve), which gets her fired from the paper, which frees her to travel across the country (presumably on her parents’ dime, when she’s not hitching rides) stalking Steve, who is cameraman for the improbably named Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church), a vapid roving reporter for a fictional news network. Hartman encourages Mary to continue her pursuit, because it’s one of those “guy things” to tease another guy about the woman obsessed with him, right? Meanwhile, Mary meets up with an eccentric but sweet guy (DJ Qualls) traveling with a girl (Katy Mixon) so devoid of character that the plain white candles she’s obsessed with lighting have more personality than she does. Of course, these two “eccentrics” eventually help to open Mary’s eyes to a better life than chasing a hunk.

Those expecting a romantic comedy like so many of Sandra Bullock’s previous films will be sorely disappointed by All About Steve; there is no romance here at all, and precious little comedy. This movie is so formulaic, illogical, cliché-ridden, and overwritten that in one scene I was able to predict a line of “dialogue” from a hearing-impaired little girl using sign language. Many things are not explained well, and I suspect a lot ended up on the cutting room floor. Bullock and Cooper and Church and Qualls do the best they can, but they all deserve better material than this; in fact, there’s a very brief appearance by Charlyne Yi, star and co-writer of the recent romantic “documentary” Paper Heart, which reminded me of how very much better that romantic comedy was than this thing. Even the title All About Steve irks me, because it’s both a misnomer and a lame, punny ripoff of the title of a great cinema classic.

At one point, Bullock’s character rants about people doing crosswords in pencil, saying the solver should take a risk by using a pen. That’s a haughty expression from a script that takes no risks at all. Pencils do have an advantage: erasers. I wish I had one that could erase this film from my brain.