Perhaps “Bottle Shock” should have been called “The Grapes of Froth” because it tells such a happy story: How the vintners of Napa Valley won the blind tasting known as the “Judgment of Paris” in 1976 and put their little piece of California paradise on the world wine stage for all time. What a movie: booze, unhappy French people, Alan Rickman and really cool pickup trucks.
The trucks are all over the place, along with a one-eyed, limping, primer-smeared VW Beetle, as symbols of the surfer/hippie-like culture that prevailed in Napa in those years, before it acquired swank, class and really expensive motels.
Rickman plays Steven Spurrier, a Brit wine merchant in Paris who is prevailed upon to sponsor, arrange and produce the judgment, which, alas, compels him to visit the Colonies, where his snobbery gets a comeuppance, Yank-style.
Director Randall Miller uses the tasting as the spine of the story and at the same time gets at other dramatic issues. The film is also a study of the landscape of Napa. And it chronicles a generational conflict between the Barrett boys, as dad Jim (Bill Pullman) tries to get son Bo (Chris Pine) to knuckle down and take some responsibility while they attempt to turn out the perfect chardonnay in California’s dustiest valley.
The movie is constructed as a cavalcade, cutting back and forth between venues. It spends some time in Paris. Then it goes to Napa, where various domestic complexities are preventing the battlin’ Barretts from putting out the world’s best potable. Pullman has put on weight and looks every inch the beleaguered patriarch, fighting off banks on the one hand and the vicissitudes of nature with the other and occasionally putting on the boxing gloves with his son, who’d rather party hearty late into the night.
Other issues are evoked less successfully. But the central narrative stays with the distinguished English aristo wandering hopelessly about the rustic valley and getting an education. Pullman and Rickman have a few great scenes together as they scuffle and paw at each other.
What makes “Bottle Shock” so rewarding, however, is something subtler. Everyone in it simply loves wine. I’m guessing that includes the director and the producers and probably the investors and the key grips.
The movie builds steadily toward its invocation of the tasting. It’s a great scene (so great that another movie is forthcoming on the “Judgment of Paris” in the near future) and the movie, though not itself great, offers a lot of fun for those of us who like our wine cold, our Rickman tart, our pickups rusted out and our French people deeply unhappy.
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