| Overall Grade: |
B- |
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| Story: |
B- |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A- |
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|
| Visuals: |
B- |
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THE MOST OVER-RATED FILM OF THE YEAR
by JimF (movies profile)
Jun 29, 2008
383
of
486 people found this review helpful
I have to tell you, I am a big admirer of independent cinema. It is one of the rare venues where you see interesting films that do not count on car crashes, special effects, gunplay or steamy sex scenes to hold the viewer's interest. Independent cinema is notorious for its being a showcase for originality in plot, dialogue and cinematography.
I make a point of this to be clear that the studio film is not the staple of my film-going diet. That said, I do not understand all the fuss about "Sideways". "Sideways" is one of the most disappointing films I have seen in some time, and arguably, the most overrated of the year.
Paul Giamatti plays Miles, who is struggling with the dual failures of his marriage and writing career. He takes his friend from his college days, soon-to-be-wed Jack (Thomas Hayden Church), a washed up actor now relegated to occasional voice-over work, on a wine-tasting excursion through the vineyards of California. Miles, who over the course of the story will reveal himself to the viewer to be clearly an alcoholic, sees the trip as an escape from the pain of these failures. His knowledge of wines is impressive and his ability to impart this expertise to friends and other aficionados rescues, if only fleetingly, his melancholy and sunken self-esteem.
Jack, on the other hand, is purely id-driven. He is the perpetual party boy, and views the adventure as one last opportunity for a fun-loving bachelor to indulge in a week of uninhibited drunkenness and sexual debauchery. Over the course of the film, Jack will reveal himself to basically be the frat boy who never grew up.
The two of them are so completely opposite, one wonders how they ever got to be friends in the first place.
Along the way, they hook up with the intellectual and likeable Maya (wonderfully portrayed by Virginia Masden) and Stephanie (fresh face Sandra Oh) a single mother with a lot of party left in her as well. Jack and Stephanie's attraction is spontaneous; Miles and Maya's relationship requires some incubating, and hatches during a rather metaphoric conversation between the two, involving Miles' affection for Pinot.
Much of the humor emerges from the unlikely friendship of Miles and Jack, particularly the latter's obliviousness and recklessness. But the true humanity of the story is mined from Miles, whose ache and discomfort of living in his own skin is blatant. Giamatti executes the role with near perfection.
Alexander Payne, whose previous works About Schmidt and Election were also character-driven films, co-wrote the screenplay. Much of the exterior shots of the film have a pastel finish; the interior shots and character close-ups employ a sharp attention to detail. Payne also utilizes other film-school techniques, usch as the split screen image and use of vaseline on the lens to give the screen a blurry image during depictions of drinking bouts.
My problem with the film is that the story never really rises much above what is essentially a buddy-road-trip flick for an art-house audience. It fails to reach the big payoff that studio versions of such films deliver. In the formulaic genre, each character ultimately learns a thing or two from the other. Does Miles discover he needs to slow down, or even cease his drinking? Not very likely. Does Jack learn infidelity is not a character-building activity? I certainly didn't get that.
All four characters of this film-- two leads and two supporting, did indeed become well developed by the closing credits; you really do get to know and care about all of them. This, and the actors' nearly flawless performances, add much to my rating.
It is the story which I found quite wandering, like a nomadic plot searching for an actualization that eventually comes, if only vague and uncertain. |
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