Bottle Shock

The outcome is predictable; anyone who cares even casually knows the Yanks won, but director milks great entertainment, if not actual suspense, out of the competition.

Bottle Shock is a pretty sunny late-summer entry itself, a treat for movie fans who prefer actual humans to comic book heroes, gross-out comedians and blowing stuff up.

Provides instant relief from this summer’s superhero hangover. As the stubborn, my-way-or-the-highway former banker, Pullman puts in a powerfully understated turn.

Bottle Shock is to wine what Rocky is to boxing, an underdog story torn from life, with just a hint of corn and malarkey in its bouquet, full-bodied wit and a joyful aftertaste.

As one of the year’s most entertaining films, experiencing Bottle Shock feels like the discovery of another Sideways -- just as unexpected and just as good.

The great pleasures of this small-scale dramedy include Napa scenery and the way Rickman savors it as he chews it up.

If movies were wine, Bottle Shock would be a pleasant varietal you'd find on the half-price shelf. Nothing fancy but tasty nonetheless: a fizzy vinho verde, maybe.

Bottle Shock, a crowd-pleasing dramedy, starts out as a valentine to viticulture and viniculture but ends up as a story of American underdog triumph.

Like a wine with a hint of bacon laced with melon, its contrasting elements coalesce to make Bottle Shock a palatable, if not thoroughly nuanced, experience.

A winning cast and a magnum's worth of subplots make Bottle Shock extremely watchable, perhaps a bit fruity, with grace notes of leather, oak and no ham.

Beautifully shot by Michael J. Ozier, the dominating taste in Bottle Shock is Rickman's beautiful performance as a snob -- a snob who is secretly open to being delightfully surprised.

It's not Sideways, but the setting is glorious. It's a more stirring story than A Good Year and doesn't overwhelm the way the documentary Mondovino did.

Bottle Shock is entertaining in a dry, subtly earthy sort of way, with hints of unexpected acidity and sweetness.

Once you uncork Bottle Shock, you'll first notice its mild yet intriguing bouquet. A sip reveals that it is pleasingly palatable and deceptively full-bodied, with a natural sweetness tempered by an undertone of dry wit, building to a strong finish.

Miller triumphs by finding the soul of the rebels who tend its grapes. Bottle Shock is something special: there's magic in it.

Like finely crafted wine, Bottle Shock is a tasty, feel-good experience.

If Bottle Shock were a wine, someone would probably call it amusing with a hint of apricot. I'd just call it a heck of a lot of fun.

Randall Miller's third feature is a charming comedy-drama that's surprising true to the events that inspired it.

It's the kind of feel-good movie whose resolution is evident from the start, being based as it is on a true story. But that doesn't make the journey any less interesting.

Bottle Shock isn't a knockout. The story of how the Barretts beat the French at their own game gets unnecessarily melodramatic at times.

Unlike Sideways, its clear forerunner, Bottle Shock doesn't have much to offer the non-oenophile crowd.

It’s worth seeing just for Alan Rickman, who plays the marvelously effete Steven Spurrier, the real-life Brit wine merchant who made it all happen.

Bottle Shock is mostly sincere as a celebration of an important event in world wine history.

It's too rambling and digressive to feel focused, yet too calculating to feel as observational and natural as a good Altman flick.

Bottle Shock is charming and sweet-spirited, but the acting at times veers toward the dreadful.

Since we know the outcome in advance (American labels are now famous all over the globe) Bottle Shock has to get by on character and charm.

Miller takes a leisurely time getting to the heart of his story, even though there are some funny bumps along the way.

The movie keeps reminding you of better films from long ago and not so long ago: If you want some real poetry about wine, rent Sideways.

Movie enthusiasts may find themselves wishing they had a bottle of something appropriate to help wash it all down.

Wine may be sunlight held together by water, as Galileo said, but Bottle Shock is held together only by Alan Rickman.

Bottle Shock rhapsodizes about wine to its finish and bases much of its suspense on the criteria of sophisticated connoisseurs that will be a mystery to most viewers with palates geared toward beer or Pepsi.

"I detect bacon fat, laced with honey melon," says a wine lover played by Dennis Farina; viewers are more likely to detect corn, with a bit of ham.

Rather than tell it in a straightforward fashion, the filmmakers decided to go in a more lighthearted direction, with cliched, predictable plotting and dimwitted humor.

Bottle Shock presents the conviction of wine-makers without any of the flavor. It all goes down OK, but anyone who cares about wine knows that OK flavor isn’t good for much.

Bottle Shock often feels out of place on the big screen, but it would probably play a lot better as a weekly half-hour TV show.

A great story -- and a true one, more or less -- Bottle Shock nonetheless fails to deliver much in the way of entertainment.

Just because a movie is energetic doesn't mean it can't feel sluggish. Case in point: Bottle Shock, an exposition-heavy comedy/drama that seems to spin itself into exhaustion.

Throw in endless Chamber of Commerce-ready footage of California wine country and dense expository dialogue about the intricacies of winemaking, and you've got a mess that not even an oenophile could love.

Bottle Shock comes on too strong and sours once the cork is popped, despite a delightfully over-the-top showing by Alan Rickman.

The politics of making wine is a great subject for a movie, but this clunker doesn't do it justice; Bottle Shock is broad and coy where it needs to be smart.

What sounds workable in print doesn't play that well on-screen. Too many cliches pile up, the stereotypes run deep and director Randall Miller (who co-wrote the script) lets things amble along without a lot of momentum.

By sweetening and simplifying the true story of how California’s wine industry made a historic impact on French palates in 1976, Bottle Shock ends up tasting more like nondescript plonk than the pride and joy of the Napa Valley.

Director Randall Miller, who also wrote the screenplay, handles the visual style of the film effectively, but none of the characters half as well -- which is where the majority of the film's problems reside.

Unfortunately, Miller never finds the right balance, so while there are some sweet notes, the pileup of clichés ultimately leaves a slightly acrid aftertaste.

The script moves from one groaning movie cliché to another and makes the absolute least of its fascinating true story.

Less solipsistic than Sideways, Bottle Shock is still more off-putting, not least of which because Randall Miller has directed the film as if it were a sequel to his Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School.

Instead of emoting, the characters are forced to spend most of their time undramatically sipping wine, swilling it from cheek to cheek with pursed lips as they sample it, and then spitting it out.

The film has its watchable moments, and -- against my will, in a patriotic moment -- I did tear up as the results of the wine competition were announced to Montelena, but it never transcends its cliched core.