Steve (Bradley Cooper, as a news cameraman), thinks one date was enough, but love-struck, crossword-constructing Mary (Sandra Bullock) has other ideas.Photo credit: Suzanne Tenner
All About Steve
- Directed by Phil Traill
- Screenplay by Kim Barker
- Starring Sandra Bullock, Thomas Haden Church, Bradley Cooper and Ken Jeong
- Classification: PG
Movies are a big topic in crossword puzzles, but not vice-versa. Your typical mainstream movie protagonist tends to go into fields such as law enforcement (detective, lawyer, superhero), education (teacher, student) or the media. With the exception of Michelle Pfeiffer in Rob Reiner's domestic weepy The Story of Us , word-puzzle construction does not offer the equivalent scenarios for high drama, high-speed chases or witty repartee. But then along comes Mary Horowitz.
Sandra Bullock has had great box-office success playing brainy, if often slightly loopy, brunettes - her role in this summer's The Proposal being the most recent example. In the lively road comedy All About Steve , which she also produced, Bullock lightens her locks and pulls on a pair of knee-high, cherry-red go-go boots to play Mary, an eccentric, single cruciverbalist who can give a dozen synonyms for almost any word but has trouble reading between the lines.
As it turns out, crossword-puzzle construction is still not a good scenario for action. All About Steve is the title of a crossword puzzle Mary creates after an aborted blind date with dreamy cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper), who thinks he's given her the brush off. The puzzle, which no one in town can solve, gets Mary fired, leaving her free to hit the road and stalk Steve (although she would not define it as such) while talking a blue streak about trivia and the intricacies of words to anyone who will listen.
The cable-news field team - Steve, pompous news reporter Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church) and producer Angus (Ken Jeong) - leapfrog around the country, following breaking news stories in Arizona (Wild West theme-park cowboy takes co-workers hostage), Boston (parents battle over fate of child's third leg), Galveston, Tex., (hurricane and tornados wreaking havoc) and Colorado (deaf children fall into abandoned mine shaft). More than Mary's quirky quest for love, the misadventures of the three not-quite-amigos provide the most laughs. Their reports resemble The Daily Show 's fake news, presenting cable news as an increasingly ridiculous game of tabloid-like one-upmanship. (Hamilton native and Daily Show regular Jason Jones's over-the-top cameo as Hughes's younger rival is hardly a stretch.)
Mary just misses Steve in Arizona but soon catches up with him at the hospital where the three-legged baby story is unfolding. She falls in with the "Save-the-Leggers" and connects with a couple of oddballs who volunteer to facilitate her travel by way of a beat-up Gremlin.
Steve, meanwhile, temporarily becomes worried that Mary aims to cut him up into tiny pieces - hot property Cooper has a thankless straight role here, not quite a romantic lead, not quite comic. It doesn't help that Hartman (Church in his element) is feeding Mary information about their destinations, partly to bug Steve but also because her stream-of-consciousness babbling yields facts he can use in his on-air reports, helping his bid for the anchor's chair.
Just when the Colorado disaster seems to have reached a happy conclusion, Mary plunges into the middle of the media circus, unwittingly becoming the hero of the story, forcing a little attitude adjustment on the part of the three main characters.
Canadian-born writer Kim Barker ( License to Wed ) has constructed a snappy, by-the-numbers road comedy, the significant difference being a bright female hero as opposed to the social-misfit male who typically inhabits such movies. Director Phil Traill, a rising star in British TV and short-film comedy, makes the whole thing sparkle, bringing a U.K. sensibility ( à la the eccentric, touching vibe of so many Hugh Grant movies) to the mix.
But Bullock, easing into her mid-40s with box-office mojo intact, remains the star attraction as the annoyingly endearing Mary. You simply can't imagine another actor of her stature pulling it off. The title All About Steve is certainly misleading - but I guess There's Something About Mary was already taken.
Special to The Globe and Mail