Movie review: ‘Bottle Shock’ tasty but trifling
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Sep 6, 2008 at 4:31am
By Ramona Bissudo
Bottle Shock is a trifle, but a tasty one. With gorgeous scenery, a gorgeous cast and celebration of the can-do American spirit, it goes down easy enough but doesn’t linger afterwards.
Directed and co-written (with wife Jody Savin) by Randall Miller and based on a true story, Bottle Shock, chronicles the events leading up to the famous “Judgment of Paris” of 1975 in which a small American winery bested the exalted French wines of the time and put California wines on the map for good. The tale is told through the lives of father and son, Jim and Bo Barrett.
A former real estate attorney, Jim (Bill Pullman) sacrificed everything to realize his dream of creating the perfect hand-crafted chardonnay. His business, however, is struggling, and he’s not only trying to overcome differences with his slacker son (Chris Pine), but is also fighting off the creditors. Meanwhile in Paris, unwitting British wine shop owner Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) hopes to revive his own failing business by sponsoring a competition which will pit the traditional French powerhouse against the California upstarts.
The cast is game, though Rickman’s grumpy snob turn is old hat for him by now. And the film may be interesting to Star Trek fans as Pine will play a young Captain Kirk in J. J. Abrams’ big-screen rebooting of the series.
Despite some simply charms, Bottle Shock is predictable (hey, we know the ending) and throws in an unconvincing (and unnecessary) love triangle and a gratuitous wet T-shirt scene.
Bottle Shock is rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some sexual content and a scene of drug use. Running time: 110 minutes. Macsimum rating: 6 out of 10. You can check out the film’s trailer on the QuickTime movie trailer site.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
