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'Bottle Shock'
PG-13 for brief strong language, sexual content, drug use
(out of four)
Michael Machosky can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7901.
If you love wine, you probably know the rough outline of how Napa Valley's backwater wine industry shocked the world -- and more importantly, the French -- at the infamous "Judgement of Paris" blind tasting in 1976.
In the early '70s, Napa Valley was home to a thriving, if unheralded bunch of wine-makers -- mostly salt-of-the-earth farmers and ranchers, with a few obsessed hobbyists mixed in. The soil and climate were perfect for people like Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) and his hippie son, Bo (Chris Pine), to pursue their quest for perfection in relative solitude.
Unfortunately, if nobody buys your wine, however perfect, you go out of business. And everybody knows that only the French can make truly fine wine.
In Paris, a British-born wine-shop owner, Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), contemplates a similar dilemma. An outsider to the French wine establishment, his sales aren't very good either, despite his undeniable passion for the product. His friend Maurice (Dennis Farina), an American, suggests he check out Napa's wines -- and the idea for a blind tasting, pitting French versus American wines, was born.
"Bottle Shock" has some great moments of fish-out-of-water comedy, as the urepentantly snooty Spurrier navigates dusty California roads in a beat-up car, searching for superior wine amid hippies, hellraisers and iconoclastic, stubbornly independent Napa winemakers like Barrett.
Pine gives a terrific performance as Barrett's often-estranged son. And nobody does pretentious arrogance quite like Rickman.
There are a few plot points that are difficult to dramatize, and the ending is a foregone conclusion even if you don't already know the story. Oddly enough, this movie about slowly savoring the subtle pleasures of wine is fast-paced, funny and dramatically compelling.
• SouthSide Works and Squirrel Hill Theatre
