Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Stanley Kauffman at The New Republic has a review of the movie "Sideways."
Yet, unlike the earlier film, Sideways is a comedy. Its comic beginnings are what delay its serious impact, not because they are comic but because they seem to predict a somewhat familiar story. Miles is a schoolteacher in San Diego, a would-be novelist and a wine lover, who goes off to northern California with an old college chum for a week of wine tasting. (Casually drinking while they drive, too.) The chum, Jack, is a good-looking fellow, full of sun-kissed charm, big and a touch overripe, a former soap-opera actor who is congenitally cheery. Jack is engaged to be married on the next Saturday. When he and Miles set off together, we know the film wouldn't have been made if changes were not coming for both of them, but little in the opening section makes us expect more than tolerable entertainment--from this pairing of an introvert and a hearty good fellow.
7:19:00 PM
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