There's something about Mary

Film review: All About Steve

MANILA, Philippines - Watching a movie with a twist can be a very entertaining experience. For one, it keeps the audience on their toes, guessing what’s going to happen next to the protagonist. Sometimes, the revelation towards the end also serves as the icing to the cake as it gives a smooth finish to an already intricately compelling plot. In some films, the twists can become unnecessary. But in the case of All About Steve, the recent 20th Century Fox boy-meets-girl offering for the big screen, the twists are justified because they can satisfy.

Mary Horowitz, played by Sandra Bullock, is a quirky cruciverbalist — a crossword puzzle designer, for a newspaper. The insanely-smart-kind-of-autistic Mary, who can come up with any number of synonyms for any word at a moment’s notice and can drive people nuts with her incessant blabbering, is socially inept and stuck living at home with her parents. This failure-to-launch prompts Mr. & Mrs. Horowitz to set their daughter up on a blind date with Steve (Bradley Cooper), a cameraman for a national news network who turns out to be pleasingly charming and outstandingly good-looking.

The date goes well — for the first five minutes —   until Mary, who thinks that this is her last chance to be “normal”, is all over him. As soon as Steve realizes how clingy and awkwardly weird Mary is, he comes up with some bogus news emergency and bolts right out of the date, and hopefully of his date’s life. But Mary is as persistent as an eight year old who’s had her first crush. The cunning cruciverbalist proves to be intent on having a happily-ever-after with Steve and follows him to wherever news hotspot he is at, keen on catching the eye of the man of her dreams. This seemingly teenaged infatuation propels the plot of what could be the most peculiar film in Bullock’s body of work since Miss Congeniality.

To some who may be used to Bullock playing the role of an empowered role model (a cop-turned-beauty-queen in Miss Congeniality and a bully editor-in-chief for a publishing house in The Proposal), seeing her play Mary Horowitz can be uncomfortable at some minor points in the movie. But Bullock’s infallible sincerity and dedication in playing this role get us accustomed to the idiosyncratic Mary, and make it bearable for all of us as we experience the highs and lows of the character as the plot progresses. To a certain level, the eccentric individuality of Mary is made easier to digest by Bullock’s seemingly unlimited supply of cuteness in her acting.

Cooper utilizes his patented formula of cute-eyes-cum-gorgeous-smile-combo in this film. Initially introduced to the audience in the guise of Mary’s blind date Steve, Cooper easily captivates the ladies with the same charm that won him acclaims for the 2009 romantic-comedy He’s Just Not That Into You — the very same charm that attracted Jennifer Aniston and Renée Zellweger in real life.

The iconic revelation as an actor in this film is Thomas Hayden Church, more familiar to the Filipino audience as Sandman in the 2007 blockbuster Spider-Man 3. Church plays the scheming newsman Hartman Hughes, Steve’s tag-team partner in chasing down the hottest headlines. Keen on nailing that news anchor post at the CCN News and eager for that career-defining story that will propel him to Pulitzer greatness, Hartman encourages Mary to believe that Steve is truly in love with her. Church’s portrayal of Hartman is hilarious, especially when his character finds delight in tormenting Steve on a regular basis. (Case in point: those moments when he encourages Mary to believe that Steve indeed has feelings for her.) Adding humor to the film is the true-to-life rivalries between various news networks and incredible things reporters do to achieve higher ratings.

And the twist of the story? Well, this story is not all about Steve, as the title states. This is all about Mary Horowitz, (an otherwise annoying character performed so endearingly by Bullock) and her uncompromising tale of how she dared challenge our standards of what’s “normal and proper.” Indeed, there’s something about Mary that makes us realize that sometimes, those who don’t fit in are the ones that stand out and become heroes in the end.

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