At Home with John and Debbie

Paul lent me Sideways having bought a copy after seeing it once already, so he must have liked it.

“The funniest film of the year”, quotes the cover. In fact it’s Empire’s film of the year. “The comically mismatched pair soon find themselves drowning in wine, women… and laughter!” says the blurb.

It does have some comedy in it. Gentle comedy. Nothing to make you laugh out loud. In fact it’s more of an downbeat character piece, with the main character being a depressed divorcee.

He’s taking his friend on a two-man stag week, a wine tour of California, but the stag has no interest in fine wine and wants to carouse a bit before his wedding. This sounds funnier than it is.

The film did well with the critics. I wonder what proportion of critics are portly gentlemen of a certain age, who get carried away by films that suggest that portly gentlemen of a certain age can attract slim, youngish, attractive women? It seemed to work for this film. It reminded me of Lost in Translation: billed as comedy, not very funny, ageing grumpy Bill Murray attracts gorgeous young Scarlett Johannsen…

Still, it passed the time and taught us a bit about Pinot Noir.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 9th, 2006 at 09:03 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.