Continuing with our survey of wine movies, my wife and I decided to revisit Bottle Shock. Here is my prior review from the early days of Irreviews; obviously we did not like it back then. But on second viewing, we actually kind of enjoyed it. What changed between then and now? Well, we’re into wine now, and we weren’t back then.

This is the unfortunate bottom line with this film. If you are really into wine as an intense intellectual hobby (not just into drinking it!) you will probably enjoy this movie. But it is definitely not a good film. It’s not even a good wine film, frankly. And the sad thing is it had a lot of potential – it could have been fantastic.

As with so many modern films, the main problem is lack of dialog. Here’s an example: in the very beginning of the film, Bill Pullman tells his son Chris Pine that they are going to “rack the chardonnay again.” Chris Pine reacts negatively, really upset, saying something like “Are you crazy? That will make 7 times!” Then one of them says “wanna fight,” and instantly the film cuts to them beating the shit out of each other in a makeshift outdoor boxing ring.

So let’s reflect on what a good movie would have done with this opening scene. First, a good movie would have seized the opportunity to explain what “racking the chardonnay” actually means, and the characters would have a (lengthy) discussion about why they felt re-racking was good or bad given 1) what they are currently tasting and observing about the developing wine, 2) what they are trying to accomplish, and 3) what had happened in the past, all three of which therefore requiring explicit exposition in the dialog. In the course of this conversation, you would begin to paint a portrait of each of these two central characters, their strengths and weaknesses, their emotional motivations, and the nature of their relationship. You would cover basic technical things about wine making, and you would frame the setting of the vino-hippy culture of the 1970’s that is the topic of the film. Now that would be an opening scene to set up an interesting movie.

Instead, what do they get by going the minimal dialog route? Bill Pullman comes off as a stammering, pig-headed dick the entire film – you hate him, and you don’t want him to win the competition. His son is a stupid, perpetually-grinning good-for-nothing with no ideas and nothing interesting to say. We don’t know anything about what they are trying to do, we know nothing about their history, not even how long they have been making wine! We just see Pullman pipetting  wine out of a barrel, endlessly. We see him tasting wine and looking “thoughtful,” endlessly. We see Chris Pine goofing with his friends, endlessly. We see them boxing each other, over and over. We see them yelling incoherently at each other. We listen to Pullman giving these insufferably righteous speeches which are just irritating without proper, intelligent development of his character. I ask you: how is any of this interesting?

The other characters are not much better. Freddie Rodriguez (who plays Gustavo) strikes me as a good and soulful actor, but his character has almost nothing to say, except “taste my wine.” Rachael Taylor, a quite charismatic actress who has slipped into complete obscurity, plays the now obligatory cute young woman bouncing between powerful, creative men as a sex object. It’s disgusting, frankly. Why couldn’t they make her a real person? She is an intern, after all, so start with what she is learning!!! It’s not that hard, people! And if she is just going to be a floozy, why couldn’t they have her at least wind up with Gustavo, who is somewhat interesting, and who also seems to genuinely like her, unlike Chris Pine who is basically unmoved by everything?

There there is Alan Rickman. I keep wanting to like this guy, but I think I’m finally getting over that and coming to the conclusion that I can’t stand him. After the film was over, I asked my wife if Alan Rickman had ever played a role that was not a highly affected weirdo who talks really, really slowly. She thought a while, and then replied that she thought there might have been one film in the distant past in which he played a semi-normal person, but that we would have to search IMDB to find the name of it. But even if this film could be identified, it would be the exception that proves the rule. The guy is like Johnny One-Note, and I’m not sure his “one note” is all that thrilling.

One thing I did like about this film was what I consider its real theme of interest, largely undeveloped but nevertheless present: the power of double-blind testing. There is starting to be more written in the mainstream about how profoundly suggestible and hopelessly subjective the human thought process actually is. The story told in this film is a good example: you have this entire culture of insufferable French wine snobbery, built on a grandiose classification jargon flowing from subjective observation, but the minute the tasting is blind these experts can’t even tell which wines are from France!

Again, if you have a strong interest in wine, this film might be somewhat enjoyable. If you are watching it for any other reason, forget it.