Sunday, September 27, 2009

Super Cinema Saturday A Little Late ~ All About Steve


My Review:

People Magazine gave this a 1/2 star out of 5. It truly wasn't that bad.

Here are my thoughts.

Sandra Bullock's character is awkward and that is an understatement. This still-at-home-with-mom-and-dad crossword-puzzle-creator is an unique blend of Cliff Clavin (Cheers) Napoleon Dynamite and Pippi Longstocking. I struggled with whether to like Mary and cheer her on or to just be annoyed and laugh at her when she fell into the big hole. I ended up doing both.

Basic plot: Mary, due to outside pressures, thinks she needs to take her one last shot of normalcy by embracing (understatement) a blind date. When he comes to pick her up and turns out to be "hot" she does this creepy silent stare thing and runs back upstairs to put some sexy on. A truly awkward scene follows when she jumps Steve (Bradley Cooper), not after an okay date but before they even pull away from her folks' house. At first Steve is dazzled by the skin and enthusiasm but then he begins to think she might be crazy so he invents an excuse...a phone call sending him away. While he's attempting to get her out of the van before she truly goes crazy he mentions wishing she could go with him. More circumstances make that a possibility. Some may call it stalking, Mary calls it many, many other things in long paragraphs and polysyllabic words.

Mary is not just a person who talks all the time -- she's a walking encyclopedia of random facts -- and she ends up alienating loads of people on her quest to find Steve. Then she becomes a hero, accidentally, of course. Thomas Haden Church plays the annoying, selfish anchorman wanna-be and he eggs Mary on. Though I wasn't sure what his motivation was exactly his encouragement got Mary to relentlessly pursue Steve. Most of the characters are oddly eccentric, almost cartoonish, from Mary's parents to Haden Church's nemesis. It was almost as if the movie was an attempt to tell a quirky feel good story blended with a parody. It's one of the stranger films I've seen.

Content warnings. The groping scene in the beginning 20 minutes of so of the movie goes on too long and it should be screened before child/young teen viewing. That probably won't be an issue though since most children will likely get bored. Several sexual references are scattered throughout the film. One news story that Steve chases down involves a fight over amputating a baby girl's third leg and there are a few obvious body part innuendo/references. Some language. Some skin, mostly cleavage.

There are several amusing one-liners and descriptives and a pretty sweet tornado besides some great physical comedy and pratfalls. A few scenes are laugh-out-loud funny. Many, many more are shake-the-head shrug inspiring. I'll give it a 3 and I'll probably watch it again when it hits DVD, if for no other reason, to see if I understand it a little better. Maybe it will have that Napoleon Dynamite magic. I didn't like it the first time I watched it either.

2 comments:

The Book Club Network - TBCN said...

I have to say the very long scene in the car where she is wearing a red bra, is an uncomfortable scene especially when I'm holding my hand over my 11 year old boys eyes and saying to him "Don't look." Then he replys "Is it over yet?"

If felt like FOREVER!! One thing I could always count on with Sandra was that she would KEEP HER CLOTHES on. Not anymore. With the last movie The Proposal when she was naked except for holding herself so we didn't see her privates. I was disappointed. The message of the Proposal was GREAT but this last one was out there for me but apparently not for my 11year old.

My son Isaac, got this movie. I asked him, "What was the message of this story?"

"That was simple mom--BE YOURSELF!!Don't try to be something you are not!~" so there. Out of the mouthes of babes.

She has another movie coming out that looks promising and I don't see a reason for her to bare all but I think I'll watch it first to make sure. Ha! Ha! not kidding!! Thanks for hearing me out on this one.
Nora :D

AnnieBlogs said...

Hi, my name is Annie Downs and I work for best-selling Christian author Sandra Byrd. Sandra's newest book Piece de Resistance just released last week.

Would you be interested in receiving a copy of the book to read and post a review on your blog? Just contact me at annie [at] sandrabyrd [dot] com and we will get a copy to you right away.

Just let me know by this Friday if you are interested. :)

Thanks for your time and investment in Christian literature.

(Sorry to leave such a long comment- I was unable to locate a contact email address for you.)