American theatre owners recently named Sandra Bullock as the top box-office star of 2009 — and clearly she deserves it. It’s easy to bring home the bacon in serviceable rom-coms such as The Proposition and sure-fire crowd-pleasers such as The Blind Side — but to turn this unspeakably dire screwball comedy about a supposedly intelligent but emotionally autistic, virtually certifiable stalker into a $30 million hit takes real charisma. Chasing a CNN cameraman called Steve (Bradley Cooper) across the United States from one breaking news story to the next, Bullock falls flat on her face so many times that the cumulative effect is almost heroic, or so the screenwriter Kim Barker (License to Wed) would have us believe. The movie ends with a teary tribute to flakes, nutjobs and crazies everywhere — at least they know their audience.
12A (98min)