Alternative headlines:
Like Frasier, only not funny
or:
Dysfunctional people talking
Review of the movie "Sideways"
Have you ever seen Anywhere But Here with Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon? That may be the ultimate "chick flick" outside of Ingmar Bergman. Two hours of a mother and a daughter arguing. Yum.
"Sideways" is like that. Only with men. Puzzling.
It is well done, and the start is promising, very quirky. But it soon started to try my patience, and by the middle of the film I was thinking "OK, but what is it about?!"
The issue with this kind of film is that the characters have no external problems. They only have the problems in their own heads. And it does not make for very exciting story telling. You keep yelling at them: "Just make up your mind!" or "Get off your butt!"
Sure, we may all have our problems in our heads, but other people's silly neuroses just aren't very interesting.
Don't get me wrong, I don't demand a lot of action, just a story. For instance one of my all-time favorite movies is Postcards From The Edge, and that is a very talky movie. But it has a story, and the dialogue is fabulous, quirky, and very funny.
If you tend to like French cinema, you'll surely love Sideways, so go for it.
3 comments:
Thanks, Pete.
This is a movie you're *supposed* to like, see? Like The Unbearable Lightness of Living.
And congrats on being the first to comment on this blog.
I invite comments from all you folks out there.
I liked this movie, it was often surprisingly funny. One way to enjoy it would be to recognize that it's not about wine, just like Field of Dreams isn't about baseball. (If it had been, I'd have hated it, as I do not enjoy watching or playing baseball. I don't care about wine either.) As in life, not everything is resolved, people rarely ever change, and sometimes hot women do eventually go for these nothing guys because they've been treated so badly by the hot guys for so long.
Fair enough.
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