Alexander Payne is a very talented filmmaker that, honestly, I can’t say I am a huge fan of. What he does, he does well. His work is generally known for a sense of what might be ennui, where even if he sets the movie in Hawaii, amidst all the tropical backdrops, the characters still flounder around and try to find some sense of, well, maybe an escape from whatever is driving them down. Likewise, there tends to be a lot of cringe comedy, where the characters’ embarrassment is supposed to lead to laughs, and I don’t always enjoy that. Still, Payne is good at what he does, so I will check out his work once in a while.
But I do like Paul Giamatti, and he was in Payne’s Sideways.
Miles Raymond (Giamatti) is divorced, miserable, and trying to get a book published. He’s also something of a wine aficionado, so when his good friend Jack Cole (Thomas Haden Church) has about a week to go before he gets married, he and Miles go on a week-long tour of California wine country. Miles would like nothing more than going from various vineyards, having a nice meal, and little more than that while hanging out with his friend. Jack, on the other hand, wants to have sex with some woman before his wedding, a plot line that seems to fit better into a crazy teen or college sex comedies, but these are two middle-aged men. It’s more like Jack is stunningly immature in many ways while Miles is still heartbroken from his divorce.
However, Miles is acquainted with a waitress out there named Maya (Virginia Madsen), and while Miles would just assume keep her that way, Jack decides to set his old buddy up with her. Plus, the pair meet her friend Stephanie (Sandra Oh), and Jack thinks she’ll do nicely for his last fling before his wedding. Jack has no problem with lying to get some, and Miles will, at least for a little while, go along with it for whatever reason, but Miles is still something of a decent, if lonely, guy. Will the guys get what they want out of this weekend, or will they find something better or worse?
There was a lot to like here, and while I may not be a Payne fan, I can still appreciate good work when I see it. And yeah, I love Giamatti in this sort of movie. He does downtrodden characters very well, and while I know exactly nothing about wine, his general enthusiasm brought a little light to his dull life, and his interactions with Madsen’s Maya seem to actually make him almost happy. It’s a nice thing to see, and while Church’s Jack is arguably not particularly punished by events during the film as much as other movies might, with Giamatti’s Miles seeming to suffer more consequences for his friend’s various actions, the thing that made the movie work for me as much as it did was that the point seemed to be to get Miles out of his funk.
And really, that part worked for me quite a bit. When he isn’t swearing about Merlot or drunk-dialing his ex-wife, there’s a sense of defeat hanging around Miles, and the week in wine country seems to, if not snap him entirely out of it, then it at least gives him a couple steps in the right directions. Quite frankly, that may be the best an Alexander Payne protagonist can hope for. I doubt I’ll rush out to see another Payne movie any time soon, but that has more to do with how much I can tolerate cringe comedy because even when that is done well, I can’t quite bring myself to laugh at it very often.
Grade: A-
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