Bottle Shock

In 1976, the year of the US Bicentennial, a British oenophile staged a contest between French wines and California wines as a stunt. It was like a shot heard round the world when the winners of the tasting by French professionals was not French wine but Napa Valley wine. The film based on a true story attempts to tell this tale. Attempts I say because although it is certainly a important point in history and does seem worthy of a tale, I'm not convinced this was it.

People will think of Sideways when they hear or see this, not because it is anything like that film but because its about wine and has lots of wine lingo interspersed in its dialog. Whereas that film had interesting characters and nice driving plot, Bottle Shock flounders in mediocrity and one dimensional characters. It feels unnuanced, seems more interested in building a boring subplot of a love triangle than anything else and has inexplicable leaps in sense.

Bill Pullman plays a perfectionist asshole wine maker, Chris Pine plays his lazy, hippie son and so on and so on. It doesn't have any real laughs, the agonizingly forced love triangle which gets no interesting resolution and a climax that is already a known and forgone conclusion and thus totally uninteresting. It basically feels like a mess of lazy film making and writing in hopes of making a few dollars off other people's success.