Filmikaze!

By: Phil Traill (director), Kim Barker (writer)

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Thomas Haden Church, Bradley Cooper, Ken Jeong, DJ Qualls

Convinced that a CCN cameraman is her true love, an eccentric crossword puzzler trails him as he travels all over the country, hoping to convince him that they belong together.

After watching The Hangover, I apparently felt the need to give Bradley Cooper one more opportunity to prove he could be in something worth watching. I knew going in that was probably a bit of a stretch, and it’ was my bad judgment that I bothered at all because All About Steve was pretty far from being worth much of anything.

I am a Sandra Bullock fan, and given to making excuses for her more dubious choices in role, but this was a bit much. The film is supposed to be about embracing differences and loving people for who they are, but the end result was like an especially painful after school special. The way that Bullock’s character was “wacky” didn’t make her lovable or easy for your average person to relate to, it just made her unbelievably sad, and that is without getting into the inherent misogyny of the whole concept. Ultimately, the message wasn’t so much about embracing differences as it was framing differences as sideshow oddities. It lacked both charm and humor, and succeeded in doing little other than making me wish I was watching something else.