BOTTLE SHOCK

Bottle Shock is based on a true story that by all means is fascinating, with the potential to be a great cinematic tale. In 1976, an expatriate British wine merchant living in Paris decided to stage a blind wine-tasting competition between the best French wines and the wines of a bunch of scrappy Californians living in Napa Valley. When all was said and done, the scrappy Americans literally shocked the world of wine connoisseurs by walking away with almost all the major awards... an event that not only put Napa on the map, but changed the way the snobby French looked at foreign wines altogether.

But that great story is dumbed down to create Bottle Shock, a feel-good father/son story replete with golden California sun, a rockin' 70's soundtrack, and a hot chick that shows up just to sleep with two of the major characters. Um. What?

Bill Pullman, the dear, nice bland actor that he is, plays Jim Barrett, a former suit that quit the 9 to 5 life in order to follow his dream of owning and running a winery. However, depsite his earnest studying of the science behind the madness that is wine, his Chateau Montelena is a failure. His good-for-nothing 20-something son Bo (Chris Pine, with one of the most gawd-awful 70s shag surfer-boy wigs I've seen in ages) is a total slacker, driving up in his beat-up pickup with a different girl on his arm every day. He can't hold a job, likes the girls and surfing, and settles things with his dad in a makeshift boxing ring right in front of the barn.

Much more interesting than this boring father/son pair is the chateau's second generation Mexican-American employee Gustavo Brambila, played by the movie-saving Freddy Rodriguez. Now, I know the movie is about Chateau Montelena, but when you have as dull a screenplay and actors as this one, you kind of wish that the film instead refocused on Gustavo's much more interesting story. You see, against all odds (and stereotypes) he was working like a mad scientist in his own barn after work, creating his own wine concoction that would also go on to win awards. And he, as a kid of an immigrant, had so much more to prove than a guy from an office that can follow directions from a book. In the movie at least, Gustavo has a passion—a feeling, if you will—for the wine, which makes him a much more intriguing character than a guy following a recipe in a book.

Oh, and just to balance things out, so it is not entirely a boy movie, a young hot woman named Sam (Rachael Taylor) is introduced as an intern, who only serves the purpose of looking hot and pursuing both of the young men. OK, so maybe they were all loose in the 70s like this, who cares? But for some smarty pants college student who is working at a winery to supposedly learn the business, she is sure quickly pushed aside in the film as a real character in order to just become the love interest goal for Bo (who just has to grow up and become a man, see?).

I'd like to say that even the presence of Alan Rickman, as the Brit who arranges the ultimate wine taste-off with the French, is wasted. Alan Rickman showing up in any film almost always makes it better (as apparently the Seattle International Film Festival audience thought, as they gave him the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actor for this rather slight role). But he doesn't get much to work with in Bottle Shock, amping up his haughty Britishness with a dash of Snape to be the doubting Thomas of the proceedings—of course only to be won over by the easy-going creative Americans. The thing is, I wasn't won over, cheering like the characters in the film at the end. I was simply bored.