Bottle Shock

Sideways wasn’t about wine. It was about Paul Giamatti. Wine was just the setting. Wine was the metaphor. Bottle Shock tries to be about the actual fields of grapes themselves, so the characters take a back seat. Some of the performances are weird, and the plot meanders from character to character. The movie’s drowning in b-roll. Endless helicopter shots of Napa Valley slow the pace to a crawl. The movie’s never sure what it wants to be. Artificial suspense is inserted unskillfully to keep the audience awake until the very predictable conclusion. It’s not a bad movie, really. It’s like a glass of “two-buck Chuck.” You can drink it, but you can’t really recommend it.