A Buddy Comedy That Isn’t For All Tastes

Hollywood needs help, stat!

For the 11th straight week, box office receipts have been down in comparison to last year’s numbers. This is the longest slump endured by the movies since July-October of 2000, and it has put total revenues down six percent from 2004.

While Star Wars fans are chomping at the bit for the release of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas’ final installment of his space-fantasy epic (so ardent are some factions that a group of devotees started lining up outside L.A.’s Grauman’s Chinese Theater almost two months ago... even though the film will not be opening there but at the ArcLight, which is about a mile away!), theater owners are just as wound up, hoping that the summer blockbuster will not only bring in the big bucks, but ramp up the audience’s appetite for going to the movies.

In the meantime, while many of you have avoided this spring’s selections at the multiplex, your craving for movies has not completely waned, as evidenced by an increase of over 20% in DVD sales over this same time last year. Some of last year’s biggest hits, like The Incredibles, Meet the Fockers, Finding Neverland and Ocean’s Twelve (most of which have been previously reviewed in this column), all occupy spots among the top ten DVD rentals and sales across the country.

In my last column, I did DVD reviews of Vera Drake and Being Julia, two films whose leading actresses were nominated for Academy Awards. This week, in the absence of any big-ticket items on the big screen, I’d like to take a look at one of the 2004 nominees for Best Picture, Sideways, which is also among the top five DVD rentals.

Sideways, which garnered a total of five nominations and won one (for Best Adapted Screenplay), follows the sad-sack journey of Miles Raymond (the ever-fantastic Paul Giamatti, who was surprisingly not nominated by the Academy), who plans a week-long trip through California’s wine country as a wedding gift to his friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actor), a second-tier actor who is looking to finally settle down... but not before one final bachelor spree.

Wine aficionado Miles, who is divorced, lonely and just a tad bitter, unexpectedly finds himself drawn to the sympathetic Maya (Virginia Madsen, who also was nominated for her work here), who works at a local restaurant and shares his affinity for fine vino (Madsen’s sparkling monologue, in which Maya elegantly explains her deep-rooted interest in wine, was almost reason enough for her nomination). Meanwhile, Jack embarks on a pre-marriage fling with Maya’s friend, Stephanie (Sandra Oh, who now stars in the popular ABC series, “Grey’s Anatomy”).

Directed by Alexander Payne, who has made a career out of sharp, yet sublimely dark and subtle comedies like Election, About Schmidt and Citizen Ruth, this inarguably well-written film is still, no matter how smartly assembled and played, a tried-and-true buddy comedy, complete with misbehaving boys (i.e., the over-sexed Jack, who finds himself in all manner of inappropriate situations) and their wacky adventures. In fact, there are some very funny sequences that put Jack and Miles in the type of outlandishly improbable situations that, if not for the film’s pedigree, would fit in rather comfortably in a less ambitious and more broad, low style of movie comedy.

This is certainly not Porky’s, but there are a few moments where decorum is certainly lacking. Thus, it must be said that Sideways, which is rated R for language and strong sexual content and nudity, may not be for all tastes, whether you’re a wine enthusiast or not.