Movie Review - 'Bottle Shock'

Bottle Shock

Starring Bill Pullman, Alan Rickman, and Chris Pine
Directed by Randall Miller
Rated PG-13

Making great wine is one of the hardest things in the world to do, like hitting a fastball, or believing female Chinese gymnasts are at least 16 years old. To achieve great wine requires an obsession to detail, because who in their right mind would want to go to all that trouble just to make lousy wine? That’s not to say there isn’t bad wine, just that they don’t celebrate it in movies. For me, the obsession is what was missing from Bottle Shock, an otherwise thoroughly entertaining story in which wine plays as big a role as the actors. There is an obsessive character here, a California vintner named Jim Barrett played by Bill Pullman, but his obsession is with not failing rather than with perfection, and they are two different things. In 1976, a British wine snob named Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) traveled to California to see if there were any wines being made in Napa Valley that could stand up to the rigorous standards of French wine. Spurrier is not just surprised but bowled over by the complexities of what he samples and believes the American wines could force even the most trained French palette to betray itself. We know how this journey ends – California is now one of the world’s leading producers of wine – so there’s no mystery here, meaning the task for Bottle Shock is to disarm and engage us with its story. It succeeds, but not without its problems. Barrett’s son, Bo (Chris Pine) is our emotional center, our way into the movie, but he’s adrift personally and professionally much of the time, and in fact, when there’s a dispute over the gorgeous new intern (Australian blonde Rachael Taylor) the audience is more likely to cheer on for the more ambitious, more thoughtful underdog, Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez). It takes Bottle Shock undue time to get us on Bo’s side. Even then, I’m not sure we’d follow him to the ends of the Earth. There are, of course, very few joys in cinema that rival watching the great Alan Rickman completely dissect a scene with his typically laconic derision. You simply couldn’t cast his role any better. Even though Spurrier doesn’t have loads of memorable dialogue, Rickman delivers an incredibly memorable performance, and we should expect as much. Freddy Rodriguez, who has found a niche more than he has stardom, is also at the top of his game. Gustavo is the character you root for, even if you’re apparently not always supposed to. Even though it’s not one of the best of the year, there is something to be said for a movie that makes you want to be great at something, as this does for making wine. If nothing else, it can fill you with the same passion that obviously filled the filmmakers. That passion may have compromised their storytelling just a touch, but it’s a damn sight better than having no passion at all.