All About Steve (2009)

From the producers of "Miss Congeniality"

We are so god damn BACK baby! Did ya miss me? I know I haven’t been publishing as many issues lately but please do not fear, this newsletter will continue to plague your inbox for as long as I have a place to post new issues. I will be honest that the last couple of weeks have seen me busy with some of my other creative endeavors, specifically preparing for live shows and working on some music, but if you want the truth, the reason I have been slacking on new issues is because over the past couple of weeks, I have binge watched all seven seasons of Step by Step and almost all five seasons of In the House. Hands up, that’s on me. I’ve apparently had a 90s sitcom shaped hole in my life that needed to be filled. My recommendation: watch In the House, skip Step by Step. So, if you’ve been wondering where the new issues have been, they’re coming your way. We start now with one of the most legendary bad movies of all time (I’ll get to why in the closing paragraph), even though it probably won’t make most top ten worst lists. I have avoided this one for a long time but feel I should feature this movie now as my penance for leaving you lovely readers hanging for so long.

What are we watching today? All About Steve, the 2009 Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper vehicle where Cooper plays the titular Steve, whom Bullock’s character is obsessed with and stalks, despite him not wanting anything to do with her. That’s all I really know about the plot of the movie. I do have vivid recollections of the trailer being grating and it played on almost every cable commercial break back when this was in theaters. The only person I know in real life who has seen this, or at least has told me that they have, was my boss from Outback Steakhouse who saw this with his wife and remarked that the movie should have been called All About Whatever Sandra Bullock’s Character’s Name Was, that his wife apologized for selecting that movie for their date night, and that was all he had to say about it. That review has stuck in my head for like 13 years now so it was clearly a good one. This one was directed by Phil Traill, a director more known for sitcom episodes than his films. Despite this one making over $40 million on a budget of $15 million, this one sits at a respectable 6% on Rotten Tomatoes so you know I’m all over this one. With all that out of the way, we might as well press play and get right back into the groove of things.

Our movie begins with Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock), a crossword puzzle writer, writing a crossword puzzle in her signature high red boots. Real Ted Mosby vibes. She walks through the park and smiles to herself when she sees people with the newspaper completing her crossword. She enters her office and almost bumps into a coworker and then interrupts another coworker on the phone, showing us she’s kinda awkward! Classic. She approaches Soloman (Holmes Osbourne), her boss, asking if she can do a daily crossword instead of a weekly one. He denies her the opportunity. She tries to present a leprechaun shaped crossword solution as a fun St. Patrick’s Day themed puzzle. Soloman replies to this with an insult, essentially asking her if she has a life. He asks if she ever goes out with friends or on a date, ever. She kinda stammers awkwardly until she replies that she has a date for this evening. Soloman is an asshole for this. Mary admits her date is a blind date, so she was going to cancel as it was set up by her parents. She also notes that she’s living with her parents while her apartment is fumigated. Soloman tells her she should go out and have fun, work less and “enjoy being normal” which ughh I don’t like that. She makes a note to “be normal” on her work folder and gives us a voiceover saying she needs to stay focused on her life’s purpose, crossword puzzles, to get her through a tough day.

She heads to Career Day at some school. She dishes her anxieties about her blind date with Steve to a firefighter (Paul Beller), worrying that Steve’s parents think he’s gay and are using Mary to test out his sexuality, before admitting that she could use some sex because it’s been awhile so maybe she won’t cancel. She is summoned to speak in front of the kids for the career day presentation and the kids are like asleep already before she begins talking about crossword puzzles. Look, I love me a crossword puzzle, but these kids are like eight. Just lie and say you have a cooler job, one that involves superheroes or something. One single child watches intently as Mary’s prepared notes and jokes do not land. The kids call her out on the fact that she writes one crossword puzzle a week, so there’s no way she can make a good living off that. She admits she’s staying with her parents temporarily and the kids continue to ridicule her. Gibby from iCarly calls her out for being single and Mary tries to defend herself saying she has had “liaisons” as the teacher shakes her head in disappointment.

We get a sad montage of Mary chasing a newspaper as it blows in the wind before boarding the bus to head home. Her parents (Howard Hesserman and Beth Grant) greet her to ask how Career Day went. She lies and says it was successful. Her mom asks if she’s going ahead with her date with Steve and she awkwardly lies about how excited she is. She goes to get ready as her parents stress that they want her to be happy and have fun. Her dad stresses that they’ll need to burn her red boots if they ever want grandchildren. Mary gives herself a pep talk about being normal while also talking to her pet hamster (? Guinea pig? I couldn’t tell, it was a quick shot) named Carol for support. Her mother comes upstairs and tells Mary that Steve is here and “he’s hot!” which Mary hopes she means in appearance not “on the inside”. She comes downstairs and lo and behold, Steve (Bradley Cooper) IS hot! Because it’s Bradley Cooper in 2009, although the spiked hair with the partially frosted tips are definitely like 8 years too late. Mary retreats to her room and changes into what is supposed to be a better outfit but she still dresses weird and that’s coming from me, the guy who wears leopard print pants with a see-through silver shirt twice a week.

Outside, Steve pops his umbrella and tells Mary he was also nervous about the blidn date but wishes they had doen this sooner. She reaffirms to herself that he’s “so not gay” before he hops in the vehicle and suggests they go to Ernesto’s, a restaurant. Mary is horny just looking at him and tries to jump his bones there. She is choked and restricted by her seatbelt. Awkward! She climbs on top of him and he’s reluctant as they are in front of her parents’ house, but she continues undressing him and he’s okay with it. She awkwardly asks if it’s Steven with a “v” or “p-h” and keeps stammering weird facts off as they try to undress each other. She like can’t shut up. She goes off on a rant about how great crosswords are. Steve is…trying to follow along but looks confused. He wants to get back to the sex but she insists she will eat him like a mountain lion. Steve fakes a phone call to get out of this and lies to Mary, telling her he has to go to Boston for his job on the news as there is a breaking story. He tries to let her down gently, saying he wishes she could be there, but boots her out of his news van anyway. She steals a Twinkie wrapper from his floor and gives her his umbrella with his news station’s abbreviation on it as he drives away muttering how she’s crazy.

Back in her room, Mary works on a new crossword as we get a voiceover about crossword puzzles. She heads into her newspaper’s office to submit her assignment into a mailbox. We get another montage of people responding to her latest crossword, criticizing it for being too difficult. Turns out the puzzle is titled “All About Steve” so they did my favorite thing and said the movie title out loud. Soloman tells Mary her puzzle is unprofessional after she confesses it’s about her date. He claims she tarnishes the reputation of the newspaper and tells her how many readers have been let down. He fires her for this. She offers to make it up to him with a fishing puzzle, but he still lets her go and she’s crushed. She should have expected this, her voiceover was about how every good puzzle needs to be solvable and entertaining and kinda universal and this one is about Steve. She went completely against her own mission statement.

Over at CCN, the news station Steve works as a camera man for, news reporter Hartman Hughes (the god Thomas Haden Church) argues with his boss Dan (Keith David) that he should get better treatment that anchor, Vasquez (Jason Jones). Dan argues that Vasquez has six Emmys, which Hartman claims were robbed from him. Steve makes a quip that Hartman is too old compared to Vasquez. Dan is upset about a recent segment and threatens the two, as well as Angus (Ken Jeong), that they’ll be fired if they screw up their next assignment. Steve gets a call from his mother telling him to check the crossword puzzle. He seems flattered until he realizes Mary wrote it al about him and he breaks the fourth wall to stare desperately into the camera. Mary meanwhile soaks emotionally in a bath to classical music. She walks downstairs in a towel and tells her parents that the universe is working to put her and Steve together, as she now has no job and can follow him to Boston. Her parents are worried that she no longer has a job, but she shrugs them off and heads out to find Steve.

Hartman, Angus and Steve show up on an assignment to a Wild Western-themed tourist attraction is Tucson where one of the employees has taken his coworker hostage. Hartman hears a sound and calls out “shots fired” and takes the handheld camera over to show that the first fatality was a horse who is lying dead on the ground. Wait, no it’s not. The horse gets up and is fine as Hartman gives a poetic monologue about how there should be a heaven for horses before learning the horse is fine and is trained to play dead for the show. The “shot” that fired was a truck backfiring nearby. Off camera, Hartman blames the other two for giving him the wrong signal despite them seeing the horse was alive.

Mary boards a bus out to presumably Boston and annoys the piss out of everyone on the bus as she just does not shut up. The bus driver, also annoyed, stops the bus and Mary gets off to use the bathroom. The bus then leaves without her, the passengers applauding as she’s stuck at a roadside café. She asks inside when the next bus to Tucson will be by and a trucker Norm (M.C. Gainey) offers to take her as he’s going that way. She asks him if he’s ever murdered anyone and he replies that he wouldn’t tell her if he did. He tells her he’s leaving so she can join or wait for the bus. She buys a cowboy hat and hops aboard Norm’s big rig after having him show his license. She writes his license number on her arm in case he murders her. On the road, Mary once again won’t shut up about crosswords. Norm politely asks for some quiet time to shut her up. Turns out she was heading to the Western tourist village. Norm tells her not to take any disrespect from Steve and before she can go on another rant, he tells her goodbye and leaves her.

Mary runs around looking for Steve and is told that the hostages are safe and the man surrendered but she can’t find Steve. She seemingly heads off to Oklahoma, where a baby born with a third leg that the media has nicknamed “Baby Peggy” is involved in a custody battle with the parents over amputating the third leg. Hartman, Steve and Angus are on the scene reporting about the custody battle. Hartman goes to interview some people on the street but abandons his interviews quickly. Meanwhile, Vasquez shows up in an Escalade with security guards and a three-legged doll, angering Hartman. Mary arrives and spots Steve doing camera work, jumping to get his attention. He is shocked to see her as she awkwardly flaps her arms and runs to him on a bridge. She jumps on him and he looks really shocked and surprised and alarmed as any of us would in this situation. She gives him back his umbrella and gives him a very flat Twinkie from her pocket. He realizes his non-serious statement of “wish you could join” was taken seriously and Mary is out there solely to see him, vowing to stay on his side to support him and, for some reason, coddle him. Mary helps him spot Baby Peggy’s dad in disguise trying to avoid the media’s attention. He runs off as a security guard tells Mary only media is allowed on the bridge and sends her to join her “friends” as he assumes she is one of the protesters in support to preserve the third leg. Mary meets Elizabeth (Katy Mixon) and Howard (DJ Qualls), two of the pro-leg protesters who take her in as a friend. Elizabeth also mentions there are better snacks on the pro-leg side and that she likes Mary’s red boots. Howard has a baby blue fedora though, so this isn’t the most sartorially inclined group in film.

Angus congratulates Steve on gaining exclusive footage and he admits Mary stalked him to the location and helped him spot Baby Peggy’s dad. Angus mentions that Mary’s behavior is alarming and Hartman leaves after overhearing this. He goes to find Mary in the crowd where he discusses the cause with Howard, Elizabeth and Mary. Mary explains the baby will be like a treefrog for some reason? Hartman invites Mary to their media tent under false pretenses, saying Steve invited her, for some reason. He tries flattering her, saying he sees why Steve “fell for her” as Mary sets off a metal detector like six times. Hartman lies and tells Mary that Steve is afraid she’ll break his heart. He tells her that if Steve asks her to leave or calls her “crazy” or “cuckoo” that that’s only his fear talking and she should ignore it and he insists she get as close as possible to him. He tells her she’s brave and sends her to get Steve.

Meanwhile, Angus reassures Steve that Mary’s only the dangerous type of stalker if she’s calm and collected while stalking him. He relaxes a bit upon realizing that she’s the opposite of calm. Just then, Mary calmly, very calmly, approaches Steve and tries to offer him a snack. He turns it down as he has a 7-Eleven Big Gulp, but he and Angus both worry about how calm she is, and how she got in the media tent. Mary is drinking one of those drinkable Campbell’s soups. Steve takes Mary outside to break it to her that she can’t stay and he didn’t mean it when he invited her. He’s nervous about how calm she is and she lies and says she still has her crossword job. She admits she spoke to Hartman and Steve realizes what’s going on. He goes to address Hartman, but Mary stops him from walking away with a speech about intimate relationships. He sees Hartman nearby and brings him over and asks he tell Mary the truth. Hartman silently reassures Mary that Steve is in love with her. He tells Steve they belong together when he notices and then Steve pops Hartman in the face. Hartman then makes up a whole thing where Steve apparently was afraid Hartman would steal Mary and they all run off to report on the decision by Baby Peggy’s family with bloody noses.

Mary tries to go treat Steve’s head and ends up pulling him off his station and injuring him as he camera catches his fall. Security drags her away. Dan calls, mad about the camerawork, and sends them off to Galveston, TX to report on a big storm. The guys are in the van and Steve is upset that everyone is playing along with Mary. Hartman, who seems to be using Mary’s extensive knowledge to his advantage when reporting on-air, gets Mary’s attention and talks with her as she runs alongside their van. He invites her to Texas and Steve tells her to go home. Mary goes back to tell Elizabeth that she’s going to follow Steve to Galveston and her and Howard offer to drive with her so we can get some road trip friend bonding including montages of goofy behavior and eating burgers. Howard also reveals that he sculpts apples into celebrities.

Hartman, Steve and Angus arrive in Galveston and report in the middle of the horrible weather. Hartman continues to use random facts Mary shared with him in her motormouth rants, which make him look good on air. The tornado touches down on the side of the road right as Howard’s car dies, with he, Mary and Elizabeth a couple hundred feet away. They duck into a drainage pipe and I really hope Mary doesn’t lose her signature red boots. A specific species of cicada rains down on them and Mary mentions how this is somewhat like a miracle because of how rare it is that this happens. They survive the tornado but Howard’s car does not; it is completely destroyed.

Dan calls Angus to chastise the crew for missing the action and tells him to get footage of the wreckage. After hanging up, Dan mentions to another CCN employee that he wants to fire all three of them and also wants to poach Vasquez from his station. Elsewhere, a bunch of hearing-impaired children are running to a fair and fall into an abandoned mine shaft in Colorado. The children are stuck and Dan sends the group over to report on it. Steve is in disguise to evade Mary and paranoid that Mary has poisoned or bugged random things in their van. They drive into the wreckage for footage and, hey look at that, Mary’s right there! Steve tries to speed away but Hartman presumably wants more facts, this time about mine shafts. Steve sees that Mary has a machete and fears that she’ll cut his legs off and feed them to him. Angus has had enough and flips out at both of them. He criticizes Hartman for tanning too heavily and calls Steve a psycho, saying Mary is just a smart woman with cool red boots. He also reminds him that his disguise won’t work because the van is the same and Angus and Hartman aren’t in disguise.

Mary realizes she shouldn’t leave her journey unfinished, just as she wouldn’t do to a crossword puzzle, and she goes to follow Steve and the gang to Colorado. The sinkhole/abandoned mine shaft/whatever has been surrounded by rescue workers attempting to get the kids out. Hartman notices Vasquez there using sign language on camera, making himself look even better since the children in trouble are hearing impaired. The workers begin to extract the kids from the hole one-by-one as Hartman reports through crocodile tears, thankful for their safety, and Mary and gang pull up in their fucked-up car. All of a sudden, the heavy machinery causes the ground to sink. Mary goes to walk up to Steve to talk to him. Of course, Mary falls into the mine live on camera as Hartman does a monologue about keeping families safe from hidden mine shafts. Who didn’t see that coming?

The rescue workers go to help Mary, who talks to herself in the hole. Dan calls, pleased that “Steve’s girlfriend” fell into the whole and insists on having Steve go on-air to discuss his “girlfriend” being trapped. Reporters rush to Mary’s parents’ house to harass them about their daughter. Vasquez consults an expert on well fatalities and also recreates walking around in red boots like Mary for some reason. Mary manages to light a lantern in the mine and finds a child (Delaney Hamilton) that the rescue workers left behind. Uh oh! Mary tries to communicate with the child about what kind of hearing impairment the child had, and keeps talking to her despite realizing the child can’t hear her. It’s kinda painful to watch.

Angus and Hartman are pushing Steve to go on-air for the exclusive scoop, but he is really against the idea of publicly claiming to be her boyfriend. They end up retrieving a note from Mary from the well and who gets to read it? Why none other than Andrew Lewis Caldwell, aka Carter from College (2008), the first movie I ever wrote about for this newsletter. I’ve been spotting Caldwell in a lot of things recently. It’s a joy. Mary reports that she has a leg injury, but notes that they missed one of the kids. Vasquez tries to insinuate Mary went in on purpose to rescue the kid. Steve goes on camera and tells the world he won’t lie about being her boyfriend, but does end up saying a lot of kind things about Mary, noting that she may be a little different, but she’s unbelievably smart and kind and well-meaning, but naïve and not too street smart. He praises her for being authentically herself, one of the best compliments you can receive as long as you aren’t a shitty person inherently.

On the surface, rescue workers estimate that Mary and the girl may suffocate after a certain period of time. Angus, Steve and Hartman worry that she won’t make it and Steve insists they do not report anything prematurely, as it would be irresponsible to worry her family without confirmation. Mary manages to make some kind of rope system and attempts to climb out like she’s Bruce in that hole Bane threw him into. Mary realizes she may be defeated, and worse, that she threw away a great life and career to be with Steve. She claims the media lies because Hartman told her Steve wanted her to follow them. Mary goes off on a rant about how people insult her all the time under the guise of asking her questions about herself. She admits she wears her red boots because they make her toes feel like “ten friends on a camping trip” which is pretty cool. The deaf girl tells Mary (in sign language, which Mary can understand but not sign well herself) that she can’t understand Mary, but Mary talks too much.

Howard and Elizabeth confront Hartman, saying they know he wrote the note that brought Mary there, and if she dies it will be on his hands. Hartman takes stock of all the people there for Mary and realizes what he’s done. Mary, meanwhile, tries to keep the child warm during what may be their last minutes alive. Mary and the little girl figure out a way out based on her knowledge of physics. Hartman, overcome with guilt, decides to take action and get them out after taking responsibility for causing this mess. He grabs onto a firehose and attempts to rappel down to bring her back up, but the hose detaches and he falls into the hole himself. He apologizes to Mary for getting her stuck. She asks how much he weighs and explains her pulley system using an old mine cart to Hartman. Mary tells Hartman he can take the credit for their rescue so he can look more like a hero as they all rise to the surface. Mary, in a voiceover, compares her situation to a good crossword puzzle as they rise from the ground to massive applause and cheers from the people in their lives. Mary’s former coworkers watch happily and mention that they’re giving her job back. Dan realizes he needs to make Hartman an anchor for this. Steve bumps into Mary and apologizes for saying things he didn’t mean. She returns his CCN umbrella, damaged. They smile at each other and she leaves to greet her adoring crowd. Steve tells her not to ever change for anyone.

Elizabeth and Howard embrace Mary as the crowd piles on to celebrate. Howard carves an apple into a Mary apple as a gift, and as she is now a quasi-celebrity. Hartman goes in front of the camera for his interview and compliments Mary. Mary gives a voiceover, saying she found people who like her for her. She also mentions that you should set something free if you love it, and if you need to stalk it, it wasn’t yours to begin with, a lovely adaptation of the old adage, and that’s our movie.

I can completely see where the 6% comes from. This one is extremely low stakes. Not even Mary herself really seems to care about losing her job. She’s also not that weird despite the whole movie trying to prove how weird she is. Sure this sucked, but honestly I was expecting so much worse. Thomas Haden Church was enjoyable as always and Sandra owned her role, however limited it may be. Before we get out of here, though, I do need to mention why this one is a legend of a bad movie. Like many other bad movies, it was nominated for a couple Golden Raspberry (or Razzie for short) awards, the award ceremony celebrating shitty movies, the year it came out. It is very rare that a celebrity shows up to the Razzies to accept their awards, but Sandra being the legend that she is not only showed up to the award ceremony, but gave a hilarious acceptance speech where she offered to either read every single line from the script to the audience and workshop how she could have delivered them better, or have them all take a DVD copy of the movie home with them (she brought a wagon full on stage with her) and analyze whether it was really the worst performance of the year, vowing to give the Razzie back the next year if they reassessed her performance. She then left to rejoin the charity dinner she skipped out on to attend the Razzies. But the cherry on top of that sundae? The next night, she won an Oscar for The Blindside. Not only did she accept her Razzie in person with a humble and funny speech, she won an Oscar the next night. Jesus Christ what a legend she is. If you want to get in on the Bullock action and follow Steve yourself, this one is currently streaming on HBO Go. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.