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 In cinemas Thursday [M]
Director: Randall Miller
Runtime: 110mins
In 1976 some of France’s best wines were pitted against California’s in a competition that gave credibility to the American upstarts and changed the world of wine forever. It’s a good story and it involves the Americans beating the French, so of course they’ve made a movie out of it. Actually, they’ve made two – the rival is Judgment Of Paris, still in production.
Bottle Shock, its title pun referring not only to the shock defeat of the French but the phenomenon that temporarily worsens wine treated roughly in transit, is a gentle ensemble piece that feels like it’s borrowing the uplifting structure of a sports movie. Alan Rickman plays Steven Spurrier, a British wine snob who sneers through his ugly moustache while searching for worthy wines and is surprised when he finds them in the vineyard of Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman). Meanwhile, Jim’s hippie son Bo (Chris Pine) is getting caught up in a love triangle with intern Sam (Tasmanian Rachael Taylor) and best friend Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez).
Sometimes it seems like every movie has to have a love story shoehorned in, no matter how tangential it is. The love story in Bottle Shock is especially half-hearted and irrelevant, serving only to distract from the focus of the move, which is at its best when Rickman is rhapsodising about how wine is sunshine held together by water or Pullman is explaining that the grapes with the most flavour are the ones that grow in dry soil because they have to struggle. If there has to be a love story it should have been about the love of wine, which the actors portray far more believably.
Bottle Shock has no shocks and no surprises. It’s not just that the result of the competition is a piece of history sitting there on Wikipedia for anyone to look up, but that many of the scenes feel contrived. When Bo gets in a fight with a racist truckie who insults Gustavo he ducks and weaves, telling him he’s telegraphing his punches. Bottle Shock does exactly that, and you’ll see every twist and punchline coming. Rickman’s performance is as good as ever, but instead of being used to hold the movie together it’s just be thrown into a blend full of too many obvious ingredients.
**½
JODY MACGREGOR
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