The Tao of Steve

The Tao of Steve

List Price: $19.99
Our Price: $10.99
You Save: $9.00 (45%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.46 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases

DVD Cover Information

Movie Reviews of The Tao of Steve

Movie Review: The Little Movie That Could.
Summary: 5 Stars

There's nothing in the film that will take your breath away, there are no special effects,and no big mystery is solved. Seeing this movie will not, I will repeat. will not change you life or cure the common cold, or lead to world peace.

This film is a wonderfully witty, smart, clever, funny and warm film about the mysteries of men and women and relationships as seen through the eyes of Dex. Dex, we first meet at his 10th Annual college reunion, was the Don Juan of the campus. He was Elvis. Now, however he's added 150 pounds, and a large basketball of a stomach to the package. Guess what? He's still a pretty busy guy when it comes to women. He's having an affair with the wife of one of his college chums, he flirts incessantly and he coaches his mostly younger room-mates about how to get lucky using the Tao of Steve. This basically means if you act like you don't want to get lucky, you probably will get lucky. You never see people like Steve McQueen working too hard to get a women to go to bed with them, do you? Or as Dex says: "Remember and never forget this: We pursue that, which retreats from us."

Dex doesn't have much ambition. In fact at one point he's accused of being a slacker and he shrugs it off saying: "You know doing stuff is over-rated." He works part time as a teacher in a pre-school. Since he's a big kid himself, he does a great job playing with, and teaching the pre-schoolers. It soon becomes clear that Dex is self-indulgent, brilliant and utterly ill-equipped to have a real relationship with a women. He can impress them, he can tell them exactly what they want to hear, he can please them, but he can't actually relate to women, because of course, he doesn't do a good job of relating to himself. He's not quite sure what he wants, or who he is. He's tried to find out, by reading lots of Kirkegaard, and Lao-tzu and Heidegger and others, but he's not found his center or the peace he needs.

Enter Syd. -- set designer for an opera company that is performing Don Giovanni at the reknowned Sante-Fe New Mexico Opera House. Syd is staying with Dex's good friends. They first meet at the college re-union party, and it turns out Syd and Dex were in the same Philosophy class together in college, but Dex doesn't remember her. Syd seems to remember Dex pretty well though.

Dex's motorcycle breaks down, and soon Syd and Dex are sharing a truck to get them to work. There's an attraction. Dex is attracted and Syd is slightly repelled - or is she?

The surprises in the Tao of Steve aren't with what happens, but in how we get there. The journey is all that counts in this movie. The film is quiet, and simple but incredibly smart. You've not witnessed such a well written screenplay in a long, long time. In fact the film is so deceptively simple and easy-going, you might wonder why there aren't films like this being made all the time. What's the big deal? It's a pleasant amiable little movie and. . . .

Then hopefully you'll be struck by how many times you chuckled at the clever lines, or the little nuances that actors brought to their roles, or how wonderfully paced, and quietly directed the film is. Director Goodman, wrote the screenplay with Duncan North. Her sister Greer Goodman plays Syd , the films leading lady. She's perfect for the role. So is Donal Logue who is wonderfully charismatic as the over-weight, selfish, cunning, but still likeable and charming, Dex. Everything works seamlessly in this film - and then you realize what a rarity that really is. It's a much better debut for Director and co-writer Jeniphr Goodman than say Sex Lies and Videotape was for Steven (Out of Sight, The Limey, Erin B.) Soderbergh. The film is better than those whose footsteps it treads in, beginning with Blume in Love, Soup for One, and failures like Windy City or About Last Night (who's source material, David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago should have made a film as good as this one-but never has). It is certainly not a film that tries to be a Moonstruck, Murphy's Romance, or even When Harry Met Sally. It's comedy and cleverness comes from it's characters rhythms. Even Woody Allen's Annie Hall wasn't as down to earth or naturally warm as this film is. You might even come to realize how the film isn't quite like anything you've seen before, making it an original in a genre you would think impossible to be original in (romantic comedy).

I suppose that might be considered a bad thing by some. The film doesn't go too far to get attention, and it never gets cloying or overly-sentimental. There's no last reel incurable disease which turns the tale into a tragedy either. There are people who want their films to be roller-coaster rides, or give them some emotional tugs and make them cry. This film is too smart to do that, and I appreciated that. What's perhaps amazing is the fact the film-makers have made a film so simple and seemingly done so, so effortlessly, you really do wonder why films like this aren't being made on a regular basis. The reason is, it's nearly impossible for everything to come together so seamlessly to create a film like this.

The little movie that could: The Tao of Steve.

Chris Jarmick

Summary of The Tao of Steve

This American indie take on the slacker lothario falls into the old familiar story: eternally adolescent man meets grown-up woman and is forced to face up to a life in which he has never taken an emotional risk or a life-changing plunge. Logue's easy charm and low-key confidence makes Dex an easy guy to like, and director Jenniphr Goodman (who cowrote the script with Greer, her sister and star of the film) invests his lifestyle of leisure (mostly guys chatting about girls and trading pop culture references) with an offhanded naturalness. But neither is she oblivious to the holding pattern his life has taken. Sure, there's an inevitability to this shaggy romance, but there's an undeniable pleasure in seeing the change in the landscape of a familiar road. --Sean Axmaker