There’s something about Mary Horowitz, the manic, speed-freak character for whom Sandra Bullock goes dirty blonde and dons red, go-go-style boots in her new movie. In Mary’s hands, forced joy is a weapon, only it’s not nearly as charming as Sally Hawkins’ character in Happy-Go-Lucky. And yes, there’s something about All About Steve, too, a special sort of trainwreck that unfolds like some fever-dream, recycled-parts mash-up of Anchorman, Mad Love, the old Heather Graham flick Committed, and a tossed-off, drunkenly self-amused improv sketch. It’s a terrible movie — a strangely terrible one, really — meriting debate only insofar as whether personal preference rates it above, below or in between Premonition and Speed 2: Cruise Control as Bullock’s biggest career misfire.

A crossword puzzle writer for a small Sacramento newspaper, the aforementioned Mary is a preternaturally wired, possibly bipolar singleton who’s staying at home with her parents while her place is being fumigated. She chatters to herself incessantly, and walks in a funky, stilted manner that underscores her endearing wackiness. Oh, and she wears red, knee-high boots. Always. Mary’s latest blind date, with Steve (Bradley Cooper, further exercising his frost-tipped glory), a hunky cable news cameraman, lasts all of four minutes. (He’s freaked out by her sexual assertiveness.) For all her book smarts, though, Mary definitely can’t read social cues. She’s head-over-heels gaga for Steve, and somehow takes his sudden, excuse-laden departure as an indication of interest in a continued relationship.

So when Steve leaves town for some from-the-field work with Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church), a blowhard assignment reporter angling for an anchor’s chair, and their perpetually exasperated producer Angus (Ken Jeong), Mary gives chase. As much for self-amusement as anything else, Hartman baits the hook, telling Mary that Steve secretly cares for her, and his increasingly vehement denials are only a sign of confusion. So, to quote early U2, if Steve walks away, walks away, walks away, walks away, she will follow. Subsequent media-swarmed backdrops for their screwball encounters include a hospital housing a baby born with three legs, a combined hurricane-tornado catastro-fuck, and a collapsed mine shaft full of deaf kids.

As penned by Kim Barker (License to Wed) and directed by British-born Phil Traill, right out of the gate All About Steve establishes itself as unfolding in a world where nothing really makes sense; just like the catch-all decor of Mary’s room (a Black Power poster, Burt Reynolds’ infamous Playgirl centerfold, a lava lamp and, oh, a guinea pig to whom she talks), the movie itself is a collection of things — characters, settings, story beats, always a bit jarring and frequently directly at odds — thrown haphazardly together. At a time when newspapers are going out of business, Mary makes a pitch for more than the single puzzle she cranks out each week, but her boss helpfully advises, “Less work, more everything else.” Later, as Mary gives chase after Steve, and he checks in with his mother by phone, there’s no mention of the latter’s connection to or opinion of Mary, which seems weird, since the movie three times mentions that the blind date was arranged by their respective parents. This is but one of many examples of things that could be easily fixed and smoothed over in the script stage, but for some reason weren’t.

Similar to something like Alone in the Dark, though, All About Steve actually does manage to wring some legitimate laughs from a willing audience member who doesn’t become surly, mainly because, against all advisable logic, it continues to try to tap into some sort of sincere emotional investment in the unfolding events. The laughs — minor chord bewilderment, really — never align with filmmaker intent, though, especially since the characters are one-note collections of tics, need or function, respectively. Ergo, when Mary finally makes the teary revelation that she wears her trademark red boots because “it makes [her] toes feel like 10 friends on a camping trip,” one might laugh… at what they’re being asked to feel.

This isn’t to say All About Steve is a total camp classic, however — a movie that can be repeatedly enjoyed with friends and the right libations. First off, it’s just lazy — the type of comedy where, in lieu of actual character development, people merely sit bewildered while Mary makes a string of inappropriate personal confessions. More than that, though, Barker’s script is downright insulting, positing, among other things, that there are chipper, wide-eyed disaster junkies that can spontaneously pop up at media-swarmed events in different states, as if they’re just following Phish around for the summer. The performances are invested, full-throttle-energy-type things, but rather quickly reach a point of diminished return, and eventually overload. It’d be the polite thing, one supposes, to say that Bullock deserves better than this sort of vehicle. But then one ponders her producer credit, and judgment in general. Mary Horowitz may not be the only one in need of some power-of-attorney advice of restraint, it seems. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 99 minutes)