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Plot synopsis Overweight Dex is the walking definition of a slacker bachelor. He fritters his days away smoking pot, drinking beer, tossing a frisbee around with his friends, — and to balance the fun, spends just a few half-days a week working as a nursery school teacher. He's perfectly happy heading nowhere and remaining single. After all, it’s not as if he doesn’t enjoy an inexplicable success rate when it comes to seducing women far more beautiful and accomplished than he is. The former philosophy student may not have put his quick mind to much use career-wise, but all that reading of Buddhism, Confucianism and the like hasn’t gone completely to waste: it’s lead him to the discovery of the Tao of Steve, the path towards making oneself irresistible to women. The Tao of Steve divides all males into two types: the Steves, the cool guys who always get the girls, and the Stus, who perpetually try too hard and, sadly, don’t. The secret to becoming a Steve isn’t in looks, asserts Dex, but in following three fundamental rules: 1) Be desireless; 2) Be excellent; 3) Be gone. But when Dex meets Syd at their college reunion, she throws his world for a loop. And Dex soon finds that the right woman can turn even a hardcore Steve into a little bit of a Stu. Review The Tao of Steve is a charming little piece of romantic indie fluff, and I don’t mean that as a put-down in any way at all. In many respects, it’s a conventional, old-fashioned romantic comedy – boy meets girl, girl hates boy, boy wins girl over with his irrepressible charm once she’s made him see the error of his ways, love and happiness prevail. There’s nothing I could tell you about this movie that could even remotely be considered a spoiler – you know exactly what’s going to happen between Dex and Syd within 10 minutes of the opening credits. Which is fine, because who doesn’t love a good happy-smiley love story that provides plenty of smart laughs along the way? The Tao of Steve is especially satisfying because the two main characters are so refreshingly normal looking that you completely buy into them as real people, not contrived characters. Greer Goodman’s Syd is attractive, yes, but it’s her no-nonsense sassiness and wit that make her beautiful – her looks themselves are just slightly on the plus side of plain. As for Dex, there’s no two ways about it: the guy’s a complete oaf. It takes a truckload of natural charisma to convince us viewers that a beer-gutted loser can be a magnet for women, but Donal Logue succeeds at just that, thus proving that he’s way too appealing an actor to be wasting his time on his current job, star of the not-funny sitcom Grounded for Life. The Tao of Steve never quite succeeds when it veers off into quasi-intellectual philosophizing, but as a light, intelligent, feel-good romance, it works. And if you don’t fall in love with any of the characters, there’s always the lovely Santa Fe setting. —reviewed by Y. Sun
---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home . |
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