All About Steve (2009) and Problematic Romantic Comedy Character Actions

 

Romantic comedies are one of the biggest kinds of films being made. People want to watch movies to escape from their day to day lives and have a fun time. Comedy brings the fun. Instead of living in whatever dour situation they are in, audiences get to spend an hour and a half chucking at the wacky antics of the people on screen. The romance brings in the sales. As any person who has sold anything would say, sex sells. The romance brings the insinuation of possible sex. Romantic comedies feature both the laughs and the sex, so they are churned out on a regular basis.

The modern, streaming heavy world has only made that more apparent. Netflix built much of their original catalogue from romantic comedies. Things like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Always Be My Maybe, The Kissing Booth, and the recent Love, Guaranteed were romantic comedies geared toward people who wanted a laugh and some love. However, like most romantic comedies, there were some problematic themes scattered throughout. There were little story bits that were troubling in ways that people wouldn’t want in their real lives. They were passable in movies, becoming semi-lovable traits of the characters, even though they would be despicable things to do.

Some of the horrible things in romantic comedies may not have seemed offensive at the time the movies were made. They might not have even seemed like bad things in the moment of watching the movies. It may have only been through reflecting on the movies that the character flaws were noticed. Yet, they were there. Many of the problems were repeated, in various ways, through multiple movies. They became tropes of the romantic comedy subgenre. Here are a few of them.

Stalking

Romantic comedies have always loved their stalkers. For example, All About Steve was a 2009 movie about a crossword puzzle creator named Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock) who fell in love with a news cameraman named Steve Miller (Bradley Cooper). She followed him across the country as he reported the news, much to his displeasure. Along the way, she met his coworkers Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church) and Angus Tran (Ken Jeong) and made some friends in Elizabeth (Katy Mixon) and Howard (DJ Qualls).

Mary spent the entirety of the movie following Steve around, even though he didn’t want her there. He told her to go home. He told her to leave him alone. She didn’t. She persisted and followed him from Oklahoma to Texas to wherever there was an abandoned mine shaft. She followed him across the country because she believed that he was the one. Now, he wasn’t the one and she learned that if a person had to fight that hard to be in someone’s life that they probably weren’t meant for each other. That didn’t change the fact that she was the main character that the audience was meant to sympathize with, and she was a weird, quirky, stalker.

Stalking wasn’t usually that surface level and obvious in romantic comedies. It was frequently a more casual stalking than following someone around the country, or even around town. The most frequent form of stalking in romantic comedies involved people planning to “accidentally” bump into the person they liked at the store or on the street. It wasn’t meant to be creepy, but it ended up being a creepy thing for the protagonist to do. It was still stalking.

Pretending to Be Someone Else

Mistaken identities are a staple in many popular romantic comedies. Something about pretending to be someone else because it is the only way to fall in love with the love interest is alluring to the people writing the movies. They think it is a quirky lie that brings both love and conflict to the central relationship. In reality, a relationship based upon a fundamental lie probably won’t have a happy ending. That is different in the romantic comedy genre.

A Crush on You was a Hallmark original movie that featured a mistaken identity. A guy fell in love at first sight with a woman, found her email, and began emailing her as a secret admirer. However, he got the email wrong and the woman he emailed wasn’t actually the woman he wanted. He was falling in love with someone else. This wasn’t a major lie. It was an accidental mistaken identity.

The mistaken identity with the lie caveat came into play in Chasing Liberty. The president’s daughter wanted some independence from her overprotective father. She sneaked away and met a guy that she quickly fell in love with. Unbeknownst to her, the guy was a secret service agent tasked by her father to protect her while pretending to be some random dude on a motorcycle. He was doing undercover work. But a relationship was formed. They fell in love. Of course, she broke their relationship off when she found out about his real job. But memories of the fun times the two of them had while running around Europe sent her back into his arms.

This was a huge lie. He pretended to be a completely different person simply to gain her trust and hang around. He manipulated her. This wasn’t a cute little love story. It was a major obstacle that most realistic relationships would have a nearly impossible time overcoming. How much of their time together involved true feelings? The president’s daughter would never know. It would be a nagging insecurity through their whole future relationship. Happy ending, though.

Even worse was Chicks Dig Gay Guys. Two guys came up with a plan to get women into bed. They would pretend to be gay. Every woman wanted a gay best friend. With the friendship built, they would gain the women’s confidence. They would become that gay best friend. Then, one thing would lead to another, and they would let the women seduce them, even though they were gay. Neither of the guys were truly gay, though. One of the guys fell in love with a woman they had marked, and things got much more complicated.

There was no way that a lasting relationship would come from this kind of homophobic, manipulative deception. There was zero way. These guys were horrible pieces of human trash and the movie wanted audiences to root for them. That was understandable, though, since the writer was basically writing about his own plan for sleeping with women. Fuck you.

Turning the Gays

Chicks Dig Gay Guys was a horrible concept because it was about two guys pretending to be gay so that women would have the chance to turn them straight. It was a despicable plan. But there were movies that took the idea of turning gay people to heart and had relationships between straight and gay people that ended in romantic happiness. The straight person would fall in love and persuade the gay character to come around to their straightness. It was always a weird romance to feature in a movie because of how unrealistic it was to people’s sexual preferences.

For a direct film version, there was Gigli. The movie wasn’t the typical romantic comedy. It was a crime comedy first and foremost, but the romance between the two main characters was always apparent. The man was straight and wanted to sleep with the woman. The woman was gay. They ended up sleeping together midway through the movie and it seemed as though nothing would come of it. Until the ending, that was. While trying to escape town, the two went their separate ways. The woman came back and took the man with her. They rode off into the sunset, a happy couple together. He had successfully turned the gay woman straight for him.

There are many problems with this romantic trope. The first is that it disrespects the idea of sexuality. It insinuates that people choose to be gay. When they find the right heterosexual partner, they will be “fixed.” That has never been the case. People who are gay were always gay. They don’t stop being gay because a straight person likes them. The second problem is the idea of people being “fixed.” That could be broken down into two parts. Gay people don’t need to be fixed. Never have, never will. Being gay does not mean that a person is broken. And it perpetuates the idea that a man could make a lesbian straight if he does well in bed. It gets the idea in men’s heads that they should pursue gay women because they could make the women love men. That is toxic thinking and stories like these perpetuate it.

The Hottie and the Nottie

This was a romantic comedy so bad that it got its own subsection. There were a great many terrible things that the main character did, fitting into various romantic comedy cliches that were meant to be cute but were actually horrific. One of those traits was already mentioned. The Hottie and the Nottie used the mistaken identity trait when the main character said that he was a fitness trainer. He said that because he thought it would get the hottie into bed. It didn’t.

There was the part where the main character hypnotized a man so that he would go out with the nottie. Then he told the nottie that the man was in love with her. He was lying to everyone, simply to have sex with the hottie. And he didn’t care one bit. He lied about his job. He lied about the other guy liking the nottie. He hypnotized the guy. It was all a giant web of lies.

The main character participated in some light stalking near the beginning of the film, as well. He found out where the hottie lived. He found out what her routine was. He found out the things that she liked. Then he placed himself into her life. He went to the beach where she liked to run on the boardwalk. He started running behind her before initiating a conversation about how long it had been since they saw one another. He lied about his job, pretending to have one that would fit more into her lifestyle. That wasn’t the only stalking, either. The hottie had various other stalkers. The movie made jokes about the people stalking her. The Hottie and the Nottie gave no damns about the horrible traits of everyone in the movie.

Finally, there was the basic story structure. The Hottie and the Nottie was one of those stories where the romantic lead didn’t notice that their true love was under their nose the whole time. They pursued the hotter person. They were superficial. However, over the course of the film, the main character began to realize that they got along much better with the friend than the hot person. They started noticing attractive things about the friend. Eventually, they decided that the friend was a better match. It made the romantic lead out to be an asshole who, initially, cared solely about looks. That got worse when he only noticed the nottie after she got a makeover to become an attractive woman. This movie was, morally, a piece of shit.

Every romantic comedy in this post was meant to be heartwarming, cute, and funny. They tried to bring those elements by having the romantic leads do quirky things to win the other person over. The problem was that many of these quirky elements manifested themselves in different levels of deception, manipulation, and harassment. They weren’t the cute, quirky qualities that the writers intended. They were much more disturbing when any thought was put into them.

People have been interested in romantic comedies for a long time. They are the ultimate feel good escapism. Instead of living a life buried in debt, health issues, and loneliness, people experience an hour and a half of two people coming together in love with jokes scattered throughout. Audiences get to laugh, they get to cry, they get to feel love blossom into a full-on relationship. The dour reality becomes a happy fantasy. That is what made romantic comedies popular. That is what keeps them popular. They are a good time, even if some of the depictions are morally questionable.

These notes should be a good time as well:

• Keith David made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in All About Steve after previously showing up in Road House (week 200) and voicing a character in Free Birds (week 209).
• This was also the third movie to feature Beverly Polcyn, who was already in Date Movie (week 164) and Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (week 221).
• P.J. Marino returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in All About Steve following an appearance in Gnome Alone (week 151).
• Ken Jeong was in All About Steve, playing the field producer for the news team. He was also in Furry Vengeance (week 162).
• The titular Steve in All About Steve was played by Bradley Cooper, who was in Valentine’s Day (week 168) the next year.
• DeeDee Bigelow returned from Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven (week 170) to be in All About Steve.
• Luenell has been featured in both Budz House (week 198) and All About Steve.
• Another returning actor in All About Steve was Sara Sanderson, who was in Norbit (week 227).
• Air Buddies (week 270) and All About Steve both featured Holmes Osborne.
• All About Steve was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for John Robert who had been in Nic and Tristan Go Mega Dega (week 272).
• Kerri Kenney returned this week after first appearing in Balls of Fury (week 349).
• One of the best parts of All About Steve was a small role played by M.C. Gainey. He was already in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Soul Man (week 354).
• Finally, All About Steve featured Howard Hesseman as Mary’s father. He played the precinct captain in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (week 400).
• Have you seen All About Steve? Were you as irritated by the stalking as I was? Are there other “cute” traits in romantic comedies that you would find horrifying if they happened to you in real life? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• I’m going to start on the next chunk of the Sunday “Bad” Movies schedule soon, so the time would be right for you to tell me about any movies that you think I should be checking out. I’m always on Twitter, and I look at whatever comments come across the blog. Hit me up.
• You can also find me over on Instagram running a Sunday“Bad” Movies account. Take a look at that.
• There’s one last thing to do before the post is done. That is to take a look at what’s coming up. This was week 409, which means next week is a franchise week. Next week is also the start of October. Put those two together and you get a horror franchise week. Which one will it be? This franchise began theatrically. Then it moved to television for the second installment before ending on two direct-to-video sequels. Four movies. I’ll be watching and writing about the Wishmaster franchise and I hope you’ll come back and see what I had to say. See you next week.