Movie Review: Bottle Shock
I had been looking forward to the release of the film Bottle Shock on DVD for some time. I recalled seeing the original trailers for it some time ago, but it never made it to my local theater. I put it in my Netflix queue, and got it shipped to me on the day of its release.
Short version of my review: Wow, what a letdown. Allow me to elaborate...
I will say, in its defense, Bottle Shock not a terrible movie. The problem is that it is a terribly confused movie. Much like the character Bo in the film, this movie has no idea what it wants to be.
The premise is straightforward and compelling. In 1976 a blind tasting of French and California wines was held in France. All the judges were French. California wines, then considered amateurish plonk by much of the world, swept the competition.
If you were to make a movie about that, how would you go about telling it? You might choose to focus on just one of the wine makers involved, as this movie did. You might choose to humanize the story by showing a bit of the real life tensions surrounding the family and business of the winery leading up to the competition, as this movie did. You might totally shift your focus away from the competition for a long stretch accounting for more than half the movie for the sake of a wandering subplot surrounding whether a cute blonde intern will fall for the hard-working young wine maker or the owner's charming but shiftless son, and another sub-plot developing whether said shiftless son will learn to be responsible. Wait, what? No you wouldn't. And yet this movie inexplicably does just that.
It's simply not true to say Bottle Shock is "about" the 1976 blind tasting. Oh, it starts out like that's what the movie is about. But once Stephen Spurrier, played very nicely by the excellent Alan Rickman, makes it to California to look for wines to select for the competition, the plot suddenly forgets him almost entirely and focuses almost exclusively on a fairly ordinary flirtation and semi-love triangle which has absolutely no bearing on the competition whatsoever. By the time they get back to the wine competition part there's about fifteen minutes of running time remaining. This results in what should have been the movie's climax seeming incredibly rushed, underdeveloped, and leaving you with more questions than answers. We discover Chateau Montelena, the wine who's owners and makers we focused on, won their category eliciting gasps from the assembled French wine connoisseurs. And then, with almost no further ado, the movie ends. Huh?
What happened to the red wine made by the other young winemaker, causing him to be temporarily fired from Chateau Montelena? We devoted several scenes to that wine and are never told how it fared in the competition. And wouldn't it have been interesting to spend a little film time on the reactions of the French, the media, and the world at large? Wouldn't it have been satisfying to develop a bit of the after-effects on Napa Valley given the sudden celebrity of its wines. Couldn't we cut out five to ten minutes of that endless rambling around the romancing of the intern which, I'll note again, had no bearing at all on the plot, to give some more time to these other areas?
And what about leading into that moment. There's much ado made about how Rickman's character carefully chooses which wines to use in the tasting. But we're never told A. What criteria he's using to select them. B. What wines he finally chooses. C. What kind of French wines they're being compared with. If the movie is "about" the tasting competition, isn't that a bit more relevant than whether the plucky intern Sam will fall for Gustavo or Bo? And why do we need so many scenes establishing the fact that Bo is irresponsible and doesn't know what he wants to do with his life? We got it after the movie told us the first seventeen times. Couldn't we have used some of that screen time to more relevant purpose?
There's some good to be found amidst the aimlessness. Alan Rickman is wonderful as Stephen Spurrier, striking a nice balance in which he seems pompous and dismissive to the California growers, while secretly being won over by their wine (though like most else of relevance in the film this could have been much further developed given more screen time). Bill Pullman is very strong as Jim Barret, the owner of the struggling Chateau Montelena. Freddy Rodríguez displays the passion and intensity of an artist as winemaker Gustavo Brambila, giving voice to the seriousness with which the Napa Valley wine makers took their craft.
But the problem with this movie is too large to overlook. The movie had an interesting and unique story to tell, but decided instead to tell a fairly ordinary story about kids flirting and a young man growing into responsibility - only the young man's dad happened to own a winery.
Captain Ed disagrees with my verdict here. But I think anyone who truly cares about the wine and/or the famous competition has to come away from this one very disappointed.
UPDATE:
Just for fun, here's a quick little summary of the 1976 Wine Tasting upon which this movie is supposed to be based. Sounds like someone could make a good movie out of that some day.
Short version of my review: Wow, what a letdown. Allow me to elaborate...
I will say, in its defense, Bottle Shock not a terrible movie. The problem is that it is a terribly confused movie. Much like the character Bo in the film, this movie has no idea what it wants to be.
The premise is straightforward and compelling. In 1976 a blind tasting of French and California wines was held in France. All the judges were French. California wines, then considered amateurish plonk by much of the world, swept the competition.
If you were to make a movie about that, how would you go about telling it? You might choose to focus on just one of the wine makers involved, as this movie did. You might choose to humanize the story by showing a bit of the real life tensions surrounding the family and business of the winery leading up to the competition, as this movie did. You might totally shift your focus away from the competition for a long stretch accounting for more than half the movie for the sake of a wandering subplot surrounding whether a cute blonde intern will fall for the hard-working young wine maker or the owner's charming but shiftless son, and another sub-plot developing whether said shiftless son will learn to be responsible. Wait, what? No you wouldn't. And yet this movie inexplicably does just that.
It's simply not true to say Bottle Shock is "about" the 1976 blind tasting. Oh, it starts out like that's what the movie is about. But once Stephen Spurrier, played very nicely by the excellent Alan Rickman, makes it to California to look for wines to select for the competition, the plot suddenly forgets him almost entirely and focuses almost exclusively on a fairly ordinary flirtation and semi-love triangle which has absolutely no bearing on the competition whatsoever. By the time they get back to the wine competition part there's about fifteen minutes of running time remaining. This results in what should have been the movie's climax seeming incredibly rushed, underdeveloped, and leaving you with more questions than answers. We discover Chateau Montelena, the wine who's owners and makers we focused on, won their category eliciting gasps from the assembled French wine connoisseurs. And then, with almost no further ado, the movie ends. Huh?
What happened to the red wine made by the other young winemaker, causing him to be temporarily fired from Chateau Montelena? We devoted several scenes to that wine and are never told how it fared in the competition. And wouldn't it have been interesting to spend a little film time on the reactions of the French, the media, and the world at large? Wouldn't it have been satisfying to develop a bit of the after-effects on Napa Valley given the sudden celebrity of its wines. Couldn't we cut out five to ten minutes of that endless rambling around the romancing of the intern which, I'll note again, had no bearing at all on the plot, to give some more time to these other areas?
And what about leading into that moment. There's much ado made about how Rickman's character carefully chooses which wines to use in the tasting. But we're never told A. What criteria he's using to select them. B. What wines he finally chooses. C. What kind of French wines they're being compared with. If the movie is "about" the tasting competition, isn't that a bit more relevant than whether the plucky intern Sam will fall for Gustavo or Bo? And why do we need so many scenes establishing the fact that Bo is irresponsible and doesn't know what he wants to do with his life? We got it after the movie told us the first seventeen times. Couldn't we have used some of that screen time to more relevant purpose?
There's some good to be found amidst the aimlessness. Alan Rickman is wonderful as Stephen Spurrier, striking a nice balance in which he seems pompous and dismissive to the California growers, while secretly being won over by their wine (though like most else of relevance in the film this could have been much further developed given more screen time). Bill Pullman is very strong as Jim Barret, the owner of the struggling Chateau Montelena. Freddy Rodríguez displays the passion and intensity of an artist as winemaker Gustavo Brambila, giving voice to the seriousness with which the Napa Valley wine makers took their craft.
But the problem with this movie is too large to overlook. The movie had an interesting and unique story to tell, but decided instead to tell a fairly ordinary story about kids flirting and a young man growing into responsibility - only the young man's dad happened to own a winery.
Captain Ed disagrees with my verdict here. But I think anyone who truly cares about the wine and/or the famous competition has to come away from this one very disappointed.
UPDATE:
Just for fun, here's a quick little summary of the 1976 Wine Tasting upon which this movie is supposed to be based. Sounds like someone could make a good movie out of that some day.
Posted by Doug Williams on
Monday February 23, 2009 at 11:12am
