Can’t-miss premise: the 1976 blind wine-tasting competition in France, with French judges, that declared a Napa Valley wine as the victor and brought respectability to California wines.
Yet miss (if slightly so) is exactly what Randall Miller’s Bottle Shock does. It accomplishes the feat by taking attention away from the high-profile competition and the British wine snob who arranged it, and focusing on the dull, factory-made story about the American father and son who produced the wine.
Bottle Shock starts out promising, with scenes in a Paris wine shop run by Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) and patronized by a lone ‘customer’, Chicagoan Maurice (Dennis Farina), who tells Steven of the promising wines coming from California, and convinces him to arrange the competition to drum up business for his shop.
Meanwhile, in Napa Valley, hard-working vintner Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) is attempting to perfect his chardonnay at Chateau Montelena, a vineyard he has left a promising law career for and just mortgaged.
He’s helped by long-haired hippie son Bo (Chris Pine), Gustavo (Freddy Rodríguez), and sexy intern Sam (Rachael Taylor). When Spurrier shows up to sample the chardonnay, Jim is hesitant, though the rest of the Valley is eager to force their wines on him.
All is well and good until the second act and most of the third: Spurrier and wines are all but forgotten as the film focuses on relationships at the vineyard: bull-headed Jim and drifting son Bo, who are actually put in the boxing ring in a number of scenes that reek of screenwriter’s contrivance; and fledgling romances between Bo and Sam, and Gustavo and Sam, and the friendship between Bo and Gustavo.
These (presumably) real-life characters have been so overwritten they come off as fictional clichés.
It’s a shame, too, because there’s one real reason to see Bottle Shock: Alan Rickman, who is absolutely in his element as Spurrier, the dry, cynical wine snob.
He plays off the Napa Valley residents beautifully, and brings the only real comedy to Bottle Shock: the film shines when he’s on-screen, doldrums set in when he isn’t. Pine went on to play Captain Kirk (and play him well) in Star Trek, but he lacks charisma and looks fairly ridiculous here.
Cinematography by Mike Ozier is frequently beautiful: the film genuinely feels like a California vineyard. Period detail is non-existent. There’s a lot to like in Bottle Shock, but it’s no Sideways: the film is ultimately most memorable for its failure to do justice to the real-life story.
