Directed by Phil Traill; screenplay by Kim Barker

Sandra Bullock is back in her comfort zone as a cute, geeky, overexcited neurotic in this comedy tailor made for her comic persona. Mary Horowitz is a “crossword constructor” (she designs crossword puzzles once a week for her local paper and calls it a career) defined by her obsessive personality, encyclopedic stores of factoids that pop up through what she imagines is small talk, and lipstick-red thigh boots that she pairs with every outfit. You know, the utterly clueless smart girl.

Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper

“Just enjoy being normal,” her editor advises. Fat chance. She hasn’t had a boyfriend in what could be decades and when the blind date her parents arrange turns out to be a real hotty, she swaps her frumpy fashions for streetwalker duds and jumps him before he can pull away from the curb. Which Steve (Bradley Cooper), a cameraman for a cable news network, wouldn’t mind if she would just stop babbling while she tears off his clothes. He fakes an emergency. She takes a brush off of as a come one and follows him from one breaking news location to another. What she treats as kismet and signs from the stars, he pegs (accurately) as delusions and stalker tendencies.

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