So … I applied to write for a pop culture website and they asked me to be a feature writer, but then they gave me a crazay assignment that was WAY too time-consuming for non-paid work, so that’s not happening. I worked on my submission review for a while and hated for it to go to waste, so I’m letting it loose on the internets …
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I knew two things about this movie when I went to see it. It’s about wine, and Alan Rickman is in it. SOLD! Sadly, while those two things may be enough to get me through my daily life, they are not enough to make Bottle Shock a good movie.
The film is based on a true story, and an interesting one for say, a “Vanity Fair” article–the kind you might read on a long flight after flipping through to look at all the pictures. But a movie? They’ve stretched the story pretty thin to make it work. In a nutshell: prior to the mid-1970’s, nobody drank California wines (except, presumably, hobos and teenagers). French wine was considered the wine, and everything else was sub par. But that all changed in 1976, when a blind taste test pitting the French vintages against the Californian turned the wine world on its snobby little head. And that’s why trips to Napa are so expensive today, kids.
Rickman plays Steven Spurrier, a British ex-pat living in Paris who inadvertently changes wine forever by initiating a taste test the French were never supposed to lose. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) and his hippie son Bo (Chris Pine — aka ‘Captain Kirk’ in JJ Abram’s Star Trek) are trying to make a go of their struggling winery, Chateau Montelena. When Spurrier arrives, offering a chance for Napa wines to finally gain some international attention, he is properly shocked to discover they aren’t serving up swill. After a breathless scare involving chardonnay that turns temporarily brown and Eliza Dushku (in a pointless cameo as a local bartender), the Montelena wine soundly beats the Frenchies in a cork-pop-heard-round-the-world moment that brings them instant success. There’s a subplot involving the hippie son, his best friend (the charismatic Freddy Rodriguez), and a beautiful girl intern (Rachael Taylor) who lives in a too-picturesque shack somewhere in the vineyard, but it’s mostly just meant as a shiny distracting filler for a story that’s not quite enough to justify a feature-length film.
Alan Rickman could read a phone book for two hours and probably get nominated for an Oscar for it, and though he turns in his usual entertaining and capable performance, he cannot save this film from itself. Pullman’s character typifies the stereotypical too-angry dad; Chris Pine’s surfer-hair wig overshadows his performance; and the true main character–the wine–takes a backseat to the young love triangle that’s been shoehorned into the story. It’s scattered but predictable, and terribly cliché in a way a true story shouldn’t be.
Bottom line: if you enjoy drinking wine while watching Alan Rickman, wait till this one’s on DVD. It’s pretty to look at and entertaining/educational in parts, but it’s not good enough to watch without a nice glass of pinot to help you through the rest.
pocketfood 
nice review, i’m still waiting for this to come out on dvd.
Thank you, my feelings exactly. I am huge Alan Rickman fan, but I was disappointed with this film. It looked like it should have been an “ABC Movie of the Week.”