Confession: I knew I would hate this movie walking in and I watched it anyway. I know, in theory if one is a critic, I should have given it the same chance I'd give Iron Man. Well, I didn't. I'm a genrephile and I tend to be aware within a certain percentage that a film won't work. It's not foolproof as I can testify from dreading then utterly loving Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. But man, sometimes it kicks ass to sit back, get your hater cap on, and shred!

As a fan of bad movies, I hope for a film like All About Steve to come along every so often. A film so profoundly misguided and haphazardly rewritten that it's awful but fun to shred. And make no mistake, I walked in, knives out ready to destroy. For I'd read the reviews, seen the trailers, and I knew a film this bad, well, I can't miss it. So, with my buck and quarter gone, I settled in, wondering how long it would take for me to start getting material for this review.

It took five shots. Long enough for our irritatingly badly named heroine Mary Magdalene Horowitz (producer and thus in no way victim Sandra Bullock) to show up at the newspaper she works for and drop off a new puzzle. In that scene, we see an editor doing paste up on a section in a Scaramento paper. And I slammed my head in my fist, grinning, knowing zero time was taken to do one iota of research. (As someone who does that professionally, it's on computers virtually everywhere, even tiny towns in AR.) Mary is an intensely quirky, rapidfire talker who will not shut the monkeywrench up ever. That she has such a bizarre job is key since we will hear a lot about crosswords in the film. Nonstop. It's going to be a dominant metaphor. Anyhoo, she also has to speak to a class of kids taught by Kerri Kenney-Silver, the first of a long list of gifted comedians in small roles. The kids ask good questions, questions that sort of point up the film's plot holes. I have a theory about this. Keep in mind I said that. In fact, when said theory comes into play, I'm tinting the words red. It comes out she is single and lives at home. But there is a blind date that night with the titular Steve. She's dreading it.

Then Steve shows up. He's a tan, blond, blandly handsome guy played by Bradley Cooper, veteran of The Hangover and Wedding Crashers. Love those films. Mary's response? She immediately decides to slut it up. Then, once in his truck, she starts to sexually assault him. He's more into it than one would think wise but clearly very disturbed and grateful when his job as a cameraman with one of those grating "I Can't Believe It's Not CNN" news networks interrupts him. He flees with a passing comment that if only she didn't have a job, she could come with him, a poorly chosen brush off. She then does something that in this world would get you committed: she writes a crossword puzzle where every clue is about Steve. She is inevitably fired and freed to go after her love.

Steve, meanwhile is on the road covering a series of absurd stories along with the bs named Hartman Hughes played by the bs looking and acting Thomas Haden Church from Sideways and George of the Jungle. I liked those. Loved Sideways. They're also joined by fellow reporter Angus played by Ken Jeong of Role Models, Knocked Up, and like Cooper, The Hangover. I wish I could say Dr. Jeong only has a brief part inflated for the poster given his current volume of films. Sadly, he earned 4th billing. Their boss is Keith David of Gargoyles and There's Something About Mary. He's the next on our good actors in small roles. Hughes is a cliched blowhard who wants to be anchor. Angus breathes air and walks on two legs.

Mary tracks the crew from a wild west show taken hostage to a hospital where a baby with three legs is being threatened with amputation. There she falls in with the crowd rooting to let the baby stay tripedal. And holy 1upmushroom! Among the crowd are Charlyne Yi from Knocked Up and the Luenell, the "prostitute" from Borat! Man I love those films. She quickly forms an alliance with a thickly accented southerner whose bustline the director seemed fixated on (Katy Mixon) and a thin, gawky guy who makes applehead sculptures (DJ Qualls from...nothing I've liked). After Hughes gets wind of Mary's travels, he decides to aid and abet her in her quest. With the help of the people from the hospital, she follows Steve to Galveston, a city I have warm memories of growing up on the Texas Gulf coast. There's no real point to this sequence, only the juxtaposing of cicadas and tornados. About this time, we also meet Hughes' rival Vasquez played by Jason Jones of The Daily Show, one of the funniest half hours on tv. Anyway, this all leads to the final story with deaf children landing in a mine. Through circumstances too unreal to explain, Mary winds up in the mine, an epiphany is had, a moral is shared, and we're done.

And it's time to get to that theory. You ever hear the term Stealth Parody? A stealth parody is a parody mistaken for the real thing. And I'm convinced the first draft of this screenplay was one. Look at the insanity on display. In a film with actual satirical intent, this would be hysterical. Hell, the deaf children in the mine is! (I am a very dark person.) And the first half of the film feels like one. It's so absurd, so ridiculous it couldn't have been written seriously. But, then the film starts to want to give a message. A message about being yourself and not conforming. It just chooses an insane stalker who irritated the 1upmushroom out of me to do so. Read Jerry Spinelli's masterful Stargirl to learn that lesson plausibly. That heroine was offbeat but lovable. Mary is too quirky to be real. She's an enyclopedia of nonsense facts. She has a guinea pig in one scene that she talks to, a reminder I could've seen G-Force. And her boots! Her monkeywrench overhyped boots! When you learn why she's wearing them, try not to get mad. The film also repeatedly orders us to like this irritant, to buy that in one day she gets her own circus. But I can't ever buy it. Everybody seems to love her. Even Steve in one instant takes to her. One. Single. Moment.

This brings me to the likely culprit of why this film is bad. The rest of the cast I'll just say I'm not mad at, hell they try. But Bullock as producer is probably the biggest reason aside from the script that this is so bad. She is at least 10 years too old for this film. It isn't the age difference between her and Cooper--less than between her and Ryan Reynolds but I heard they had good chemistry in The Proposal. It's the juvenile role. This character would be immature at 25. Bullock is 45. She was too old for a part no actress could make work. My theory is the blanding of the script was her doing to make it a vehicle for her. And it hurts to demolish her work here so I'll take care to note that While You Were Sleeping is a similar film starring her but it doesn't suck and is quite charming.

Yes, I walked into this expecting to hate it. But I don't. I pity it. There clearly was an idea for a good dark comedy here. There are ideas that in a good film could work. (Igor had a great bit with disabled children and it was good.) There is a great cast here. The raw material was there. But...it sucked.

wow I'm sot of interested in seeing this.

Much like with The Spirit, I'm almost recommending it to see how badly a project can be done.

The Spirit is another stealth parody, I believe. Miller on some level definitely knew he was writing a spoof, but wasn't willing to say so out loud. Maybe not even to himself.

See, I agree fully. The difference between this and that is Miller went full throttle for the parody and created a gleeful piece of trash, one that is a blast if only for how wrong/right it is. This keeps toeing the line but lacked the courage at least in this form. I truly am convinced it had to have a more interesting initial form. To go forward with a scene with deaf kids falling down a monkeywrenching mine requires it.

One thing about Miller, you sure can't accuse him of ever lacking the courage to charge ahead.

He's Custer-esque like that.

I salute you for having the balls to see this...thing. I mean, everyone here knows I'm a masochist, but you were really taking a bullet with this one. I obviously knew you were going to do it from our conversations, but didn't know you'd actually have the nerve to subject yourself to what is (in my opinion) the worst movie of 2009 so far, just barely edging out Rob Zombie's Halloween II. (Don't worry, won't ask you to sit through that.)

You're right on every count, though. This was just a total miscalculation as soon as the Fox logo fades out. I watched The Proposal again last night, and although it's still not a great movie, it at least has some charm to it thanks to the actors. This has all the charm of seeing a puppy getting run over by an eighteen wheeler.

The poster sums it up. Three talented, funny men cringing in horror at the sight of a character who looks the 20 years too old to be doing this 1upmushroom that she is.

And Halloween II, I'm not saying no. I'm saying hell no.

My friends are in awe of me seeing that BTW. They can't believe I'd willingly watch a bad movie DESPITE my open and oft expressed adoration of MST3K.