'All About Steve' creepy, painfully unfunny

ALL ABOUT STEVE — ★ — Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, Thomas Haden Church; rated PG-13 (vulgarity, profanity, violence, brief sex, slurs, brief drugs); in general release

There's something about Mary — Mary Horowitz, that is.

There's something that's not quite right. Something that's disturbing and unnerving. Something that makes it impossible for anyone to possibly like her or ever want to spend any amount of time with her.

All that in spite of the fact that the character is played by Sandra Bullock, an actress who's usually very good at eliciting audience sympathy and who can normally get people to like her.

Unfortunately, there's nothing Bullock can do to salvage either the character or "All About Steve," a creepy and painfully unfunny stalker comedy that is, ostensibly, all about Mary.

In fact, if the long-delayed movie didn't star Bullock — who's just coming off a $100 million hit with "The Proposal" — and Bradley Cooper — who's coming off a $200 million hit with "The Hangover" — it would have probably gone straight to video. Or better yet, it would have gone unreleased.

As played by Bullock, Mary is an eccentric, knows-everything crossword constructor who's living with her parents (Beth and Howard Hesseman).

They've recently set her up on a blind date, with Steve (Cooper), a cable-news cameraman.

Steve offers the motor-mouthed Mary all kinds of half-hearted excuses and promises to get away from her — including telling her she should join him on the road sometime.

So the recently unemployed Mary takes Steve up on that "offer" — by pursuing him as he goes from one national headline story to the next.

Among the film's other big problems is its unsure tone. It's mean-spirited one minute and suffocatingly sweet the next.

Then in the final 30 or so minutes it turns deadly serious, which is about the only time this mess gets any laughs.

Bullock doesn't escape completely blame-free, though. She produced the film and broadly overplays the character, wearing a perma-smirk throughout.

Also, we would normally sympathize with Steve, but Cooper plays him as an unrepentant jerk. He sort of gets what he deserves.

"All About Steve" is rated PG-13 and features crude sexual humor and references, scattered strong profanity, violent content (slapstick, vehicular mayhem, natural disasters and child-in-peril elements), some brief sexual contact, derogatory language and slurs, and brief drug references (toxic chemicals and narcotics). Running time: 99 minutes.

e-mail: jeff@desnews.com