'All About Steve' not all that

I looked forward to seeing "All About Steve" all summer, but part of me knew it would probably disappoint me. But it had Sandra Bullock as a quirky lead, and I have liked the majority of her movies I've seen, and it had dreamy Bradley Cooper. As it turns out, my movie instincts were right and I did end up disappointed in the movie. Read more about it in the Weekend Pinnacle on Friday.

The movie had a loose plot with Bullock playing the quirky Mary Horowitz. Mary is a cruciverbalist - more simply someone who loves crossword puzzles - and she creates them for a local newspaper. But her life is turned upside down when she goes on a short blind date with Steve (Bradley Cooper), a cable news cameraman, who escapes the date by faking a call from work when Mary starts talking in sentences full of all the random crossword facts she knows. He leaves her with an off-the-cuff comment about how he wishes she could join him on the road. It's a guy response to keep from hurting a woman's feelings, as though sitting around and waiting for someone to call for weeks doesn't cause it's own hurt feelings.

The funniest thing in the movie, at least to me, is a bit where Mary creates a crossword puzzle entitled "All About Steve." Readers are pissed when they can't complete their weekly crossword because they don't know Steve. I know how serious newspaper readers take their crosswords as I've been subjected to the wrath of readers when production staff somehow messed it up. When I promised one woman we would re-run the correct crossword the next week, she told me she might not live that long.

But aside from a few funny moments, I found "All About Steve" less than charming. For movie-goers who want to see Sandra Bullock play a quirky, super smart woman, try "Love Potion No. 9." The movie came out in 1992 and is the first Sandra Bullock movie I ever saw. She stars in it with Tate Donavan. She is plays Diane Farrow, a biochemist who is focused on her work and very socially awkward, until her lab partner happens across a love potion that turns them both into a magnet for the opposite sex. The movie has plenty of funny moments, without all the over-the-top craziness of "All About Steve."