''All About Steve'' is a 2009 American

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...

directed by

Phil Traill Phil Traill (born June 6, 1973) is a British television and film director. Although born in New Jersey, Phil was brought up in London, England London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of ...

and starring Sandra Bullock,

Thomas Haden Church Thomas Haden Church (born Thomas Richard McMillen; June 17, 1960) is an American actor. After starring in the 1990s sitcom ''Wings'' and playing the lead for two seasons in ''Ned & Stacey'' (1995–1997)'','' Church became known for his film work, ...

, and

Bradley Cooper Bradley Charles Cooper (born January 5, 1975) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the recipient of various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award and two Grammy Awards, in addition to nominations for nine Academy Awards, si ...

as the eponymous Steve. The film is the winner of two

Golden Raspberry Awards The Golden Raspberry Awards (also known as the Razzies and Razzie Awards) is a parody award show honoring the worst of cinematic under-achievements. Co-founded by UCLA film graduates and film industry veterans John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy, ...

and has a 6% approval rating at

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

Plot

Mary Horowitz, a

crossword puzzle A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answ ...

writer for the ''Sacramento Herald'', is socially awkward and considers her pet hamster her only true friend. Her parents decide to set her up on a

blind date A blind date is a social engagement between two people who have not met, usually arranged by a mutual acquaintance. Structure A blind date is arranged for by a mutual acquaintance of both participants. The two people who take part in the blind ...

. Mary's expectations are low, as she tells her hamster. Mary is pleasantly surprised when her date turns out to be handsome and charming Steve Miller, a

cameraman A camera operator, or depending on the context cameraman or camerawoman, is a professional operator of a film camera or video camera as part of a film crew. The term "cameraman" does not imply that a male is performing the task. In filmmakin ...

for the television news network CCN. Steve does not reciprocate her feelings. After an attempt at an intimate moment fails, in part because of her awkwardness and inability to stop talking about vocabulary, Steve fakes a phone call about covering the news out of town. Trying to get Mary out of his truck, he tells her he wishes she could be there. Mary believes Steve, so decides to pursue him. Her obsession gets her fired when she creates a crossword titled "All About Steve". Following her termination, Mary decides to track him around the country in the hopes of winning his affection. She is encouraged by CCN

news reporter A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

Hartman Hughes, who hopes to use Mary's encyclopedic knowledge in his reports to help get promoted to

news anchor A news presenter – also known as a newsreader, newscaster (short for "news broadcaster"), anchorman or anchorwoman, news anchor or simply an anchor – is a person who presents news during a news program on TV, radio or the Internet. ...

. On the road, Mary annoys some bus passengers so much, the driver abandons her. She hitchhikes with a trucker named Norm, then meets and travels with a pair of protesters: Elizabeth, a ditzy but sweet and likeable girl, and Howard, who sells apples he carves into celebrities. She gradually grows close to the two. Steve and crew end up covering a breaking news story: an old mine collapsed with numerous deaf children stuck inside. Initially, it appears that the children are rescued. Mary, who arrives on the scene, accidentally falls into the

mine shaft Shaft mining or shaft sinking is the action of excavating a mine shaft from the top down, where there is initially no access to the bottom. Shallow shafts, typically sunk for civil engineering projects, differ greatly in execution method from ...

as well while making a beeline for Steve. It turns out that not all the children have been rescued, and Mary is trapped with one left behind. Steve begins to realize that Mary, in her own unique way, is a beautiful person. Just as she figures a way out, the two are joined by Hartman, who is made to feel guilty by Elizabeth and Howard for getting Mary into this predicament. Mary's rescue plan works, but she lets Hartman take the credit. She finally realizes she does not need Steve to be happy. In a voiceover she says, "If you love someone, set him free; if you have to stalk him, he probably wasn't yours in the first place." After the end credits, a competitive TV reporter, in despair that Hartman got popularity by jumping into the sinkhole to save Mary, also jumps into it.

Cast

* Sandra Bullock as Mary Magdalene Horowitz *

as Steven "Steve" Miller *

as Hartman Hughes *

Ken Jeong Kendrick Kang-Joh Jeong (, ; born July 13, 1969) is an American actor, stand-up comedian, producer, writer and licensed physician. He rose to prominence for playing Leslie Chow in ''The Hangover'' film series (2009–2013) and Ben Chang in the ...

as Angus Tran *

DJ Qualls Donald Joseph Qualls (born June 10, 1978) is an American actor. He is best known for his work in films including ''Road Trip'' (2000), ''The New Guy'' (2002) and '' The Core'' (2003), and for several appearances on television series such as ''B ...

as Howard * Katy Mixon as Elizabeth *

Beth Grant Beth Grant (born September 18, 1949) is an American character actress. Between 2012 and 2017, she was a series regular on the television comedy '' The Mindy Project'' in the role of Beverly Janoszewski. She is also known for her role as Gracie ...

as Mrs. Horowitz * Howard Hesseman as Mr. Horowitz * M. C. Gainey as Norman James "Norm" Durwood *

Luenell Luenell Campbell (born March 12, 1959), known mononymously as Luenell, is an American comedian and actress. Career In the early-1990s, Luenell appeared regularly on ''Soul Beat TV'' on the Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city an ...

as Protester's wife * Jordan Morris as Protester Winston *

Keith David Keith David Williams (born June 4, 1956) is an American actor. He is known for his signature deep voice and commanding screen presence in over 300 roles across film, stage, television, and interactive media. He has starred in such films as '' T ...

as Danny * Holmes Osborne as Soloman * Jason Jones as Vazquez *

Noah Munck Noah Bryant Munck (born May 3, 1996) is an American actor, comedian, YouTube personality and music producer known for his roles as Gibby in the Nickelodeon series '' iCarly'' and "Naked Rob" Smith in the ABC comedy series '' The Goldbergs''. He ...

as Student * Rachel Sterling as Booby Botanist

Production

Production began in July 2007. Parts of the film were shot at

Mayfield Senior School Mayfield Senior School is an independent Catholic college preparatory school, founded in 1931 for young women grades 9-12. It is sponsored by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, a member of the Holy Child Network of Schools and is guided by the ...

in Pasadena, California. Scenes featuring the collapsed mine and sink hole were filmed at

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...

Golden Oak Ranch Golden Oak Ranch is an 890-acre (360 ha) movie ranch owned by the Walt Disney Studios subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company that serves as a filming location and backlot. The ranch is off of Placerita Canyon Road outside of Newhall, Santa ...

near Santa Clarita, California. Originally scheduled for release on March 6, 2009, the film was not released until September 4, 2009.

Release

''All About Steve'' opened at #3 behind the previous two weeks' #1 openers, ''

The Final Destination ''The Final Destination'' (also known as ''Final Destination 4'') is a 2009 American 3D supernatural horror film written by Eric Bress and directed by David R. Ellis. It is the fourth installment in the ''Final Destination'' film series and ...

'' and ''

Inglourious Basterds ''Inglourious Basterds'' is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger and Mélanie Laurent. The film tells an altern ...

'' with $11.2 million. The film grossed $33.8 million at the North American box office and has a worldwide total of $40.1 million.

Reception

assigned the film an approval rating of 6% based on 140 reviews with a rating average of 3.1/10. The site's critics consensus states: "''All About Steve'' is an oddly creepy, sour film, featuring a heroine so desperate and peculiar that audiences may be more likely to pity than root for her." Another review aggregator,

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, gave the film an average score of 17 out of 100 based on 27 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of C+ on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert gave the film 1 and a half stars out of 4. ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' named it one of the top ten worst

chick flick Chick flick is a slang term, sometimes used pejoratively, for the film genre catered specifically to women's interests, and is marketed toward women demographics. They generally tend to appeal more to a younger female audience and deal mainly ...

Accolades

The film was nominated for five

in 2010, including

Worst Picture The Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture is an award given out at the annual Golden Raspberry Awards to the worst film of the past year. Over the 39 ceremonies that have taken place, there have been 202 films nominated for Worst Picture and 42 ...

, Worst Director (Phil Traill), Worst Actress (Sandra Bullock), Worst Screenplay (Kim Barker) and Worst Screen Couple (Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper). ''All About Steve'' ultimately won Worst Actress and Worst Screen Couple. Sandra Bullock accepted the Razzie for Worst Actress, giving out a copy of ''All About Steve'' to each member of the audience, promising to attend next year if they all watched to consider if it was "truly the worst performance". When an audience member thanked her for the copies, Bullock replied "You say that now". She won the

Academy Award for Best Actress The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year ...

for '' The Blind Side'' the next day, making Bullock one of the few performers to win an Academy Award and a Razzie Award in the same year.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:All About Steve 2009 films 2000s comedy road movies 2009 romantic comedy films American comedy road movies American romantic comedy films 20th Century Fox films Dune Entertainment films Films produced by Sandra Bullock Films scored by Christophe Beck Golden Raspberry Award winning films 2009 directorial debut films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films