Theatrical legend Bertolt Brecht once famously devised the concept of the “distancing effect”; a method by which the audience fails to become immersed in a narrative because of some overly strange or alienating artistic device. Brecht certainly never knew it, but what he describes applies perfectly to Sandra Bullock’s latest comedy, a film so alienating in the depiction of its protagonist that it’s difficult to call it a comedy at all.

Sandra Bullock is evidently a talented actress, but I wonder why she so insistently frequents her CV with dreadful films like 2007’s Premonition, and this week, All About Steve. I wonder, is she ever going to be as much fun as she was as Annie in Speed? This “comedy” marks an all-time low for the actress, and while she has received two Golden Globe nominations this year, she may also be courting a Razzie for her insipid performance as Mary Horowitz.

Horowitz is a crossword maker for a local newspaper, who is told to “be normal” by her boss, because she has an aggressively obsessive personality, and comes to work dressed in trashy red boots and a sailor outfit. She also appears to be sex-starved, as would explain how she becomes instantly transfixed with Steve (Bradley Cooper), a cameraman who she is set up with on a blind date, before dragging him into her van for a desperate fumble. You need only observe Mary manically popping into frame like a serial killer to guess that she is clearly unhinged, and it’s totally reinforced when, in the next issue of the newspaper, she publishes a crossword that is, indeed, all about Steve. It’s the creepiest thing you’ll see in a rom-com all year and quite possibly all decade, and if it’s screenwriter Kim Barker’s idea of sweet, then I fear for her real-life suitors.

This is a film with a tone battier and more schizophrenic than the film’s hapless protagonist, and it’s a shame that a solid cast got roped into this mess; Thomas Hayden Church particularly tries his best as the network’s news presenter desperately attempting to become a news anchor, while Keith David slums it as a network executive, and The Hangover stars Bradley Cooper and Ken Jeong are adequate as the straight guys. The film splits its time between Mary’s obsessive search for Steve (who has gone on the road to cover a story), and the exploits of Steve and his news crew. However, the film manages to score with neither, resulting in some of the most embarrassingly unfunny comic scenes you’ll see all year, especially when we’re watching the crew’s shoddy news reports. It’s particularly embarrassing for Thomas Hayden Church, who probably should know better, but gives it his all nevertheless.

The key issue with the film is that it simultaneously ridicules its protagonist while expecting us to sympathise with her; as she travels on a bus to find Steve, she is eventually booted off the bus for her endlessly annoying torrent of general knowledge, and frankly, who can blame the bus driver? The screenwriter simply has a very odd idea of what constitutes “funny”, and the end result is more embarrassingly awkward than Curb Your Enthusiasm-awkward. The image of Bullock frantically flapping her arms up and down while running towards Bradley Cooper’s character in slow motion is difficult to erase from the mind for all of the wrong reasons; it is a potent reminder that no actor, no matter how wealthy, is free from the grip of the recession.

Bullock’s character is quite possibly the least personable protagonist in modern film history, and while the film frequently draws attention to her insanity through the utterances of the other characters, its self-consciousness doesn’t really make her sad and pathetic character anymore likeable. It’s almost as though the screenwriters realised this half-way through writing the film, and so made a half-baked attempt to mitigate her creepiness by having Church’s character encourage her to follow Steve, in a subplot that quietly fizzles out later without any satisfactory explanation or payoff.

One could quite rightly argue that we’re not meant to feel sympathy for Bullock’s character, but you needn’t be a film scholar to observe the film’s thinly-veiled message about being yourself, not to mention the cloying power ballads that play during Mary’s quest to find her Lothario, which clearly assert the film’s agenda. This all the more capitulates the film’s utterly schizophrenic tone, which simultaneously asserts how crazy she is (with snippets of a Psycho-esque score playing whenever she dashes on screen), while asking us to view her as the gallant hero, aided by some “sage” narration from Bullock, who obtusely links crosswords to the nature of life.

As the third act rears around and the film becomes increasingly more desperate for both laughs and sympathy, there’s the equally desperate wish from the viewer that it would go the full whack and become a dark comedy, with Mary turning truly psychopathic. Of course, it never does, and the tone consistently treats her as “sweet” and affable, while every so often amping up the Hitchcockian string section when she nears Steve. It makes for a beguiling mix that means Mary is an incredibly difficult character to get behind.

The final section of the film, in which a group of deaf kids are trapped down a mineshaft, seems to broadly satirise the crass and disingenuous nature of TV news, but fails to be funny or clever, subsisting on rote gags that’ll courteously exit your mind the second you leave the cinema. The film also very cheaply attempts to turn the tide in Mary’s favour, with characters making off-the-rails changes in demeanour for her benefit, while Mary (who is now trapped down the shaft also) rips through a monologue, implying that just because she is aware of her insanity, that this somehow makes it alright. The film is so aggressive in trying to get us to like her despite how thoroughly annoying she is that it only heightens the distancing effect the viewer feels.

Furthermore, the film posits a sort of community spirit stemming from Mary’s quirkiness, but frankly, what did she do to deserve this? By this point, with the media clamouring around Mary, who is still trapped down the shaft, you may attempt to convince yourself that the film is satirising the packaged sentimentality of TV news (and how easily people are suckered in by it), but it plays far too straight to be in any way funny.

Admittedly, the film’s adulation of its loopy protagonist could have been even more aggressive given the expected outcome, but as a celebration of one very creepy woman, this film feels materially wrong. As a comedy, as a satire, as a drama, and as a film, All About Steve universally fails.