DVD Reviews

All About Steve - Blu-ray Review

By Dana Rae Jan 4, 2010, 16:07 GMT

$Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock) is a cruciverbalist - a crossword puzzle constructor. Her brain spins at warp speed with an endless stream of arcane information. She can come up with the perfect word - and dozens with the same meaning - at a moment\'s notice, but$

Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock) is a cruciverbalist - a crossword puzzle constructor. Her brain spins at warp speed with an endless stream of arcane information. She can come up with the perfect word - and dozens with the same meaning - at a moment\'s notice, but "normal" behavior eludes her. Take, for example, the fact that she lives with eccentric parents. Or her inability to engage in social intercourse without ...more

Join the fun in another Sandra Bullock romantic comedy filled with quirkiness and lots of laughs, All About Steve comes to Blu-ray. Bullock plays Mary Horowitz, a crossword puzzle maker, who is zany and a bit 'off'.

Horowitz still lives with her parents, and they set her up on a blind date with Steve (played by Bradley Cooper from The Hangover). Before the date even starts, Mary has him in the backseat, quite literally, before they even get out of her parents’ driveway. Steve has a deal with a friend to call him and if the date is going badly, he will bail.

He bails, with the excuse that he has to get to work on a breaking story, as Mary is taking off her shirt. He gives her the usual dribble and never plans to call or see her again since he is so freaked out that things happened so fast. But Mary has other plans, as she has, in the few minutes of making out with Steve in the backseat of his vehicle, fallen in love with him.

She essentially becomes a stalker, and uses her newspaper resources to create and publish a crossword puzzle that only has his name as the answers over and over (I know, I would have been creeped out, too).

This gets her fired and she realizes she has no other alternative but to follow him cross-country, if for no other reason than to tell him she loves him and to give him back his umbrella.

Steve works as a camera guy for the news reporter Hartman Hughes (played by Thomas Haden Church). Church might be the best actor in this film, even out-shining Bullock’s quirkiness. He plays Hughes to the hilt, an arrogant, self absorbed, manipulative news reporter who is intent on furthering his career and chasing the ‘big’ story (no matter how surreal the event is).

He has some of the cheesiest lines as he reports about saving a three legged baby’s third leg and in another scene, saving a group of deaf children that have fallen down an old mine shaft. Yet his delivery comes off as down right funny, campiness that is pure entertainment. I may be a bit biased, since I have been in love with Thomas Haden Church since his days on Wings playing Lowell.

Mary shows up at every assignment of Hartman and Steve, and ends up making friends with Howard (DJ Qualls) and Elizabeth (Katy Mixon), two lovable losers who were protesting cutting off the baby’s third leg. They agree to take Mary to the next assignment in Howard’s car and have some adventures on their own, namely riding through a tornado and picking up the pieces afterwards.

Everyone ends up together at the next assignment, as Hartman stacks the deck for Mary to follow them by feeding her love for Steve by telling her he really, really wants to be with her. Mary ends up falling down the mine shaft trying to get to Steve and saving a deaf girl who got left behind.

Here the story and plot seem to drag somewhat, but it is a turn for the better for Mary’s character, as the whole world watches the drama unfold on television (led by commentary by Hartman, of course) and suddenly she is not completely crazy, but just a little eccentric, and a much, much better human than any of us (cue Hartman’s tears here).

Led by a really good supporting cast that includes Keith David playing Hartman’s heartless boss Corbitt, M.C. Gainey who plays a truck driver that gives Mary a ride, Howard Hesseman and Beth Grant as Mary’s parents, and Ken Jeong as part of Hartman’s camera crew, the laughs are in the bag.

If somewhat predicable plot-wise, it is still fun to watch Mary and her red boots to see what she will do next. The Blu-ray comes loaded with special features that include audio commentary with writer Kim Barker, Bullock, Church, Cooper, Jeong, and Director Phil Traill. There are deleted and alternate scenes to enjoy and a gag reel with optional commentary.

Bradley Cooper and Ken Jeong have a Capella Duet, which is really fun, and there is featurette entitled All About All About Steve, and crew snapshots to Mary’s Rap.

The second disc includes the digital copy for portable media players.

With a great cast that seem to have fun and give and take with one another (no one star totally shines, even Bullock, who would have fallen flat without such funny cast members), this is a great ensemble movie. The comedy is campy but so much fun. This is a very good movie to just sit back with a bowl of popcorn…and enjoy. The story is probably a three star but the talent of the cast bumps it to a four star, in my humble opinion.