18 out of 18 people found this review helpful.
A really atrocious movie
Date of Review: Sep 16, 2007
The Bottom Line: It is a truly repulsive movie. It has no redeeming value whatsoever.
My wife were house sitting for a weekend. The house had a DVD player and a halfway decent television.
So we had to get a DVD from Walmart which was about 15 miles away. I didn't see a Blockbuster nearby.
The rules were simple. We could purchase a DVD for no more than $5.00. It was after all for only 48 hours. I purchased "Sideways" because I had heard so much about it. She purchased "The Andy Griffith Show" nine episodes for $1.00.
I was fully prepared to like Sideways. After all it won an Academy Award and it was a comedy. Unfortunately the movie went downhill from the first 10 minutes and kept spiralling downwards.
The basic plot of the movie is that 2 losers (for lack of a better word) take a trip to the wine country in California. The boys are unhappy, the boys take a trip to wine country, they meet girls and they get happy.
Unfortunately the boys (Miles- the novelist who is terminally depressed) and his friend Jack (who will get married after this trip is over) journey to their depressed ones mother's home. Most unusual is that Miles' goes into his mother's drawer and steals her money for this weekend trip. Miles' buddy is Jack. His only rationale for this trip is to get laid. Whatever affection or sympathy I had for these characters had immediately vanished after the first 15 minutes of this movie.
They hit the wineries and Miles starts his critique of wines. For Miles wines are a way of life not a just a hobby. Incredibly for a man who is into wine he sounds like a childish petulant intellectual snob into one upmanship with no one in particular. It sounded so artificial and pointless that I was getting bored by even looking at them. The only interesting thing at this point was the wine country scenery which is just awesome and the movie just don't capture the full essence of it.
Incidentally the swearing seemed to be so forced and pointless that I actually got tired of hearing it. Yet another bad point of the movie.
They meet the 2 ladies (Virginia Madsen -Maya and Sandra Oh - Stephanie). They were the high point of the movie. But it takes so incredibly long for them to develop it into something interesting. Stephanie does have sex with Jack. We get to see actual coupling which seems terribly pointless. Maya has the only good line in the entire movie. Wine - "It tastes so effin good."
Anyhow on with the pointless plot. Jack and Stephanie and Maya and Miles pair off. You kinda hope that something would develop, an understanding that the plot should advance go into a new direction, maybe some comedy, maybe someone should utter something profound, look at the scenery and make a comment. But no it just drags on endlessly till the couples split apart.
The movie is about halfway over. There is no comedy so far, no romance, a short sexual event and an immense amount of cursing. By this time, I did turn of the movie went to bed and actually apologized to my wife.
The next morning turned the movie back on and wanted very desperately to finish off the movie before my wife came down and wanted to see it. And so the movie dragged on, our 2 losers play golf, tell their dates the main reason for this weekend and proceed to get beaten up. The cursing at this point was very apropos.
Our 2 losers repair themselves Jack wants to try again at finding yet another girl. He does find a girl and proceeds to have sex with her and she throws him out without any clothes. Miles rescues him providing us with the only comedic moment of the film.
The weekend finishes and Miles got to his friends wedding. He confronts his ex-wife and suddenly Miles starts changing his life. He drinks his favorite wine and proceeds to change his life.
At no point in this movie did I feel good about the 2 main characters. The essential point of any movie or story is that you care for the main characters you wonder about what happens to them after the movie or book finishes. I never cared about the characters while the movie was playing and I will never care about them after the movie.
IT WAS A WASTE OF MY FIVE DOLLARS. I plan to write the director and ask for my five dollars back. He should have enough money made from this movie to give me back my five dollars.
My wife's selection of the 9 episodes of "the Andy Griffith Show" had more comedy than the entire movie.
This was a piece of trash of the highest order. It was a truly bad movie.
Family Video
