Second Opinion: ALL ABOUT STEVE

[JustinL 216]

Only 27 five-star reviews? Can o’ corn.

 

I thought the one by “Mevashir” could be a joke, so I clicked “See all my reviews.” I’ve come to the conclusion that this person is quite possibly literally insane. All About Steve is the only movie he’s ever reviewed. All the others were books either about global economies, metaphysics or religion that consisted of long numbered lists of points and full letters he had already written to the authors. One contained a letter to an author within a letter to another author. The only exception was a one-star review of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie which he slams for being “anti-Christian” and “anti-Biblical” for its “evil subliminal message” that if you help people they will just take advantage of you. He gave a bad review to a book about the murder of Dr. George Tiller because it was too critical of the murderer’s motivations for what is a “complex moral issue.” Regardless, he claims to be a “peaceifist” who hates capitalism and recently is starting to turn around on the whole hating gays thing. And did I mention he’s also a 9-11 Truther?

 

Five-Star Amazon Reviews of All About Steve

 

 

Quirky Comedy with a Story, May 7, 2012

By Joseph M. Canon "Phoenix" (North Hollywood, CA)

I didn't know what to expect, because I heard this didn't do so well at the box-office, but I love all of Sandra Bullock's films, so I thought I'd take a gander. So glad I did! This was really a tremendous movie. Very unique and original story, unique characters, and lots of laughs, with a decent plot and storyline too. As good or better than Sandra Bullock's best movies. Tremendous supporting cast. Dialogue that "sparkles" and "entertains" and a story that is "solvable". Five stars for sure.

 

A True Sleeper! Do NOT miss this movie!!, July 5, 2010

By S. Broumley (Sequim, WA USA)

This movie was laugh-out-loud funny punctuated with tear jerker moments that had me reaching for the tissue box. Sandra Bullock is such a lovable nerd!!

 

AMAZINGLY FUNNY AND CHARMING FILM, September 24, 2012

By Mevashir (Denver, CO)

This film should have received an Academy Award nomination. Perhaps the only reason it did not is that it would be hard to categorize it as either a comedy or a serious film.

The acting was good, the plot engrossing, and it contained much profundity.

I laughed and cried.

It is a simple story but very profound and moving.

Sandra Bullock hits it out of the park.

But few will recognize her talent here because it is not full of mindless TITillation and other trite and banal themes.

If you want to be stirred in your spirit, watch this film.

It will charm you and change you ... for the better.

 

Sparkling comedy, February 5, 2011

By Alijazz

Sandra Bullock is excellent as the beautiful, mystified crossword puzzle writer, who cannot puzzle out anything else about life, or love. Considering some of the other reviews, I was expecting to be disappointed, but my husband and I laughed out loud all the way through at the physical comedy and jokes. It's a very quirky film, in a very good way - satirising pretty much the whole modern world, from the sensation-seeking press to the New Age Movement. As someone with a child with learning disabilities I was very pleased to see Hollywood making such an elegant statement about equality and acceptance via this very original film. My family felt it to be definitely worth the money, and definitely worth our time.

 

Great!, February 24, 2010

By E. Frye "lover of the arts" (Texas)

I loved the idea of a female heroine that ended up without the man. Most movies like this end of in the "happily ever after" stage where they get together. But this one showed a different side and I loved it. I thought Sandra Bullock did a great job in this role. Her character was a bit hard to believe but at the same time most women don't follow the man around the country. They just wait until he comes back to make their life "All About (insert male name)". I loved the odd people that were also in the movie that made it just that much more better. They made the movie seem as if it could happen to anyone and that these people were ones that I could run into on the street. Loved it!

 

Not a bad movie!, March 24, 2010

By Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States)

I'll never forget that I wanted to celebrate the first semester of grad school, so we went to the movies to see Sandra Bullock in All About Steve in September. When we entered the theater, we were puzzled since we were the only ones there, and when the lights went down we each took a different row just like you might on an unexpectedly empty plane during a night flight. The movie began with just the two of us, and we weren't even bored yet, when the film ground to a halt, literally. The screen went dark, the lights went up in the house, and an official of the movie chain approached us in our rows. Apologetically he said that the showing had been cancelled due to poor attendance and that we would be getting our money back.

 

"When's the next showing?" asked my wife.

 

"There won't be any more," he said apologetically.

 

"But it just opened on Friday." (This was Sunday afternoon.)

 

"We won't be showing it again," said the manager. "Starting at 7:00 p/m we're bringing back Star Trek."

 

"We saw that," we objected. But as it turned out we saw it a second time, and it was fine. We saw a lot of things in the movie we'd missed first time around. Nevertheless we were wondering whatever happened to Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock) after she schlepped to Oklahoma to follow the CCN team covering the little girl with three legs. So it was great when the DVD came out, and we could watch the rest of the show. Not a bad movie!

 

 

HONORABLE MENTIONS

 

"FAIR ENOUGH" Award:

 

I LOVED this story...., June 17, 2012

By dSavannah George-Jones (rural Arkansas)

The only thing I didn't like was Sandy's haircut & color: this character would not have highlighted, fixed hair. She just wouldn't care.

 

"WAIT...WHAT?" Award:

 

All About Obsession, March 23, 2012

By Ivy Bewley "Hiedra" (Hamburg, PA)

Personally I thought there was a lot of intelligence and a good message packed into a seemingly ordinary movie.

 

"MOST AROUSING REVIEW" Award:

 

All About Sandra's Tallent...., September 30, 2011

By GregO

This is a charming and extremely entertaining movie, warm funny and quirky. Sandra Bullock nailed her character explicitly. Mary Horowitz is a tender-hearted square-peg in life's harsh round-hole; an attractive, intelligent, loveable doofus.

[JustinL 216]

By chance, I discovered that Kevin Killian (Star Trek guy) also did a 5-star review of Burlesque that was equally bizarre and focused on the wrong thing.

 

One shock after another, November 29, 2010

 

By Kevin Killian

 

In Burlesque, the actress Kristen Bell, who I remember from TV's Veronica Mars, does the sort of total reinvention, bordering on scarification, that won Charlize Theron an Oscar when she tried it in Monster. After the movie we were all sitting there, saying, "That was Kristen Bell?" The film has her playing Nikki, a dancer with enormous talent and charisma who's hobbled by two nasty problems--megalomania and alcoholism. Something's a little wonky with the script, which seems to be playing on two time scales at once.... One in which Nikki is roughly the contemporary of Christina Aguilera's character, maybe a bit older (in fact Bell is five months older than Aguilera), and the other in which Nikki was around when together, she and Cher started the burlesque dance palace around which the movie, and their lives, revolve. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was scratching his head when the big parking lot scene took place and Nikki started giving Cher (I mean "Tess") a guilt trip for preferring the new girl Ali! That's the part where Cher says, what about all the years I held your hair up out of the toilet bowl while you were vomiting everything but your memories?

 

It almost seems that their memories changed and transformed as the decades passed. Both Nikki and Tess look pretty ageless, but Nikki actually seems younger than Tess because at least she can still move her body. Cher parades through the movie as though she had no feet and is being wheeled about on casters by invisible unions whose members are all fieldmice, On the minus side, there is perhaps one spectacular musical number too many, but outside of that, Burlesque is perfect.

[Mikeyfazed 65]

I actually laughed a few times when I saw All About Steve, maybe it was surprise at how poorly the movie was reviewed.

I really liked the line where Sandra goes, "doing a crossword puzzle in pencil is like screaming with your lips duct taped shut"...

I actually re-wound that a few times on my DVR since I was laughing so hard.

 

The rest of the movie isn't that great, but I laughed out loud way more at this than I did during big budget "comedies" like Hitch, Guilt Trip, or any Katherine Heigl movie.

 

2.5/5 stars.