Posted on 12/29/2004 2:17:32 AM PST by JohnHuang2
With the Oscar nominations looming on the horizon, I feel the need to point out that low budget does not necessarily translate into high quality, that past history offers no guarantees, and that "Sideways," the critics' favorite, is the most over-hyped commodity since Enron stock. This particular emperor is as naked as a jaybird.
Because I thought that "Election," the earlier Alexander Payne-Jim Taylor collaboration, was terrific, and their "About Schmidt" was pretty good, I had reasonably high hopes for their latest. However, about five minutes into the movie, I began to get that queasy feeling one usually gets 30 seconds into a Jim Carrey flick.
Our protagonist, Miles Raymond, is driving up the 405 freeway while concentrating on a crossword puzzle. To this day, I have no idea what the scene was intended to convey. All I got out of it was that he was an irresponsible moron who didn't care who he killed. Somehow, though, I don't think that was the message.
Not long after he takes off with Jack, the movie lost all semblance of logic and reality. I was willing to accept that these two guys may have been college roommates, that having been a matter of chance, not choice, but not for a second did I ever believe they had stayed in contact for nearly 20 years, let alone that they maintained a friendship.
And theirs, we're asked to believe, isn't just a casual friendship, but one in which Jack would invite Miles to join him on his week long pre-nuptial romp. For not only do these two men have nothing in common, but they resent and totally disapprove of one another. For god's sake, you'd think they'd spent all those years married to each other!
The next insight we have into Miles' character is when the two of them flop at his mother's house, scrounging up a free meal and a bed for the night under the guise of celebrating the widow lady's birthday. Miles celebrates the occasion by sneaking into her bedroom to steal several hundred dollars from her bureau.
To compound the sin, as the two men are taking off the following morning, the tender-hearted lady asks her middle-aged son if he could use some money. In this miserable movie, that's a laugh line.
Over the course of the two hours, we discover that this pretentious poseur has cranked out an awful novel, 800 pages of stream-of-consciousness drivel that nobody wants to publish and which even he, in one of his few honest moments, admits isn't very good. We also learn that he takes no pride in being a high school English teacher, and we see that he obviously makes no effort to do it well.
We also witness this self-pitying lump pour a winery's spit bucket over his head and run amok when he gets word that his book has been rejected by yet another editor who isn't insane enough to confuse a puffed-up wine snob with Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky.
At the end of the movie, I could only hope that, for her sake, Maya not only wasn't home when this whiner came knocking, but had moved out and left no forwarding address. Miles is one package who should definitely be returned to sender.
To be fair, the movie has a few amusing moments, and the acting is far better than the material deserves. But why anybody in his right mind would elect to spend his time and money in Miles Raymond's company is beyond me. All I know is that once the ads touting all its Oscar nominations start appearing, people will be even less likely to question the emperor's apparel and, presumably, even more likely to question my taste, if not my sanity.
All I can say is that it won't be my fault if on your death bed, along with regretting all the TV reality shows you wasted your time watching, you find yourself wishing you had back the 123 minutes you squandered on "Sideways."
It rates 96% on rottentomatoes.com...sheesh.
So the movie was about a pair of losers, so bite me, I still liked it.
My son, a real movie buff, told me I need to see this movie.
Rotten tomatoes is where I go for movie rating. The Tomato-meter says it all.
With google you can 99% of the time find the review very quickly by typing in the movie title and the word "rotten".
WingNutDaily are the fine folks who published a review of "The Alamo" by someone who couldn't be bothered to see the actual movie.
Well that's pretty stupid. I had no interest in seeing "The Alamo". But since I haven't seen it, I don't reviews for it either.
Can't say much for "Sideways". Haven't seen it and no interst in seeing it either. Not because it might have some liberal stance on certain issues, but simply because, well, not my kind of movie.
What about it did you like, if you don't mind my asking?
Mrs Drango and I liked it...
I had to laugh at Jack's character. I have a friend who is exactly like him. A good looking, not-overly-bright, has-been athlete, who in his youth plowed through the female population of our town like a hot knife through butter, got married in his late 30's, couldn't get over his tomcat ways, got divorced, and is now boinking anything without a Y chromosome. Some of Jack's lines came right off my friend's lips, making me wonder if the screenwriter knows him.
-ccm
I saw Sideways last night.
All of my sophisticated friends, i.e. my leftist buddies, told me it was a must see. It has been nearly unanimously hailed by critics as a "perfect" movie.
I tend to disagree.
Long story short, it is about a middle-aged divorced, depressed dude and his middle-aged, Hollywood actor friend, who wants to get laid before his wedding a few days away. Our lead characters take a trip to the wine country so they can bond for one last time - and so the actor friend can sleep with as many women as possible - before the big day. Divorced, depressed dude is a struggling author. In one of the movie's final moments, he learns his latest manuscript is rejected - a question that loomed throughout the entire movie. The answer to the question, however, was never in doubt. Nothing good ever happens to divorced, depressed dude, and unless you are an idiot, the rejection is no surprise.
The movie had a few funny parts, and was a bit entertaining. But "perfect" or "the year's best." Far from it.
How could this movie receive such high praise? I have no idea. Perhaps it is because certain critics can relate to being depressed losers or immoral jackasses. Perhaps the "culturally sophisticated public" adopts and mimics the claims of greatness made by the critics. I don't know.
With 4 jackasses representing pure liberal propaganda (like movies such as The Contender), I would give this movie 2 jackasses were it not for one scene in particular. Because of such scene, I give it 3 jackasses out of 4. The scene is one of the movie's most amusing. Immoral jackass has just had sex with a married waitress in her home. Her husband arrives in the middle of the adultery, and immoral jackass rushes out of the house leaving behind his wallet, which also holds his wedding rings (Why anyone would keep their wedding rings in their wallet on vacation is beyond me). Divorced, depressed dude is forced to re-enter the house to retrieve the wallet for his comrade. In so doing, he walks in on the waitress having violent sex with her husband, who is apparently aroused by the fact that his
"dirty" wife has just slept with a patron. In the background, on the tv, throughout the scene is a picture of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. I am unsure exactly what the director's intent was in having the two Republicans appear in the scene. It was obviously some type of swipe at them. And it was tasteless, just like almost all of this movie.
So, the movie gets 3 jackasses not due to some overt liberal message but because of its pathetic characters, who in my mind represent most liberals: divorced, depressed, immoral jackasses.
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