Bottle Shock

In Brief: A classic example of taking a fairly simple story and bitching it up by grafting on at least two, if not three, unnecessary, unpersuasive and largely inconclusive subplots, Bottle Shock raises the question of whether or not a pretty good movie can be killed by a really bad wig. In this instance, I’m going to say it can at least come darn close. Is this too much fuss over a wig? I don’t think so, because it’s more than distracting here — it makes it even harder to like Chris Pine’s already hard-to-like character. And liking that character is essential to the film. Getting past the tonsorial issue, what we have here is a beguiling story built around a charming (and surprisingly deep) lead performance from Alan Rickman as a semi-stuffy Brit who promotes his less-than-successful Parisian wine shop by staging a blind wine-tasting where French and California wines go head to head. (There’s no big drama. We know the Yanks come out on top from the onset.) Great, but the movie keeps going off on tangents that are hard to care much about. Rickman, however, gives a truly remarkable performance — one that makes the movie worth a look.