Bottle Shock (2008)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

Randall Miller

Writers (WGA):

Jody Savin (screenplay) &
Randall Miller (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

19 September 2008 (Hong Kong)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

Based on a true story of love, victory and fermentation.

Plot:

The story of the early days of California wine making featuring the now infamous, blind Paris wine tasting of 1976 that has come to be known as "Judgment of Paris".

Plot Keywords:

Wine | Wine Making | Airport | Paris France | Father Son Relationship

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Chris Pine	...	Bo Barrett
Alan Rickman	...	Steven Spurrier
Bill Pullman	...	Jim Barrett
Rachael Taylor	...	Sam
Freddy Rodríguez	...	Gustavo Brambila
Dennis Farina	...	Maurice
Eliza Dushku	...	Joe
Miguel Sandoval	...	Mr. Garcia
Bradley Whitford	...	Professor Saunders
Joe Regalbuto	...	Bill
Hal B. Klein	...	Shenky
Kirk Baily	...	Loan Officer
Phillipe Simon	...	Claude Dubois-Millot
Philippe Bergeron	...	Pierre Tari
Mary Pat Gleason	...	Marge

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some sexual content and a scene of drug use.

Runtime:

110 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French | German

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:PG-13 | Netherlands:6 | Singapore:NC-16 | South Korea:15 | Hong Kong:IIA | Australia:M | Portugal:M/12

Filming Locations:

Buena Vista Vinyards - 18000 Old Winery Road, Sonoma, California, USA

Company:

Intellectual Properties Worldwide (I)

Trivia:

The Parisian street scenes were filmed in Sonoma, CA using cars provided by members of the Arcane Auto Society car club. The automobile's owners were used as extras in the street scenes that showed their cars.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: In one scene, a CA license plate of the form "1 ABC 123" is shown, while such license plates weren't issued until 1980. In 1976, CA license plates had the form "123 ABC"

Quotes:

[first lines]
Bo Barrett: [voice-over during a vineyard pan] It wasn't always like this. Before Paris, people didn't drink our wine. I mean, my friends did. But you could hardly consider their palates discerning...
Bo Barrett: Hell, we were farmers... sort of...
[pan to empty bottles of Montelena label and several early twenties/late teens smoking hookah]

Movie Connections:

Spoofs It Happened One Night (1934)

Ambitious Effort, Gone Astray

Too bad, tch tch tch. They had something great to make a film about, but instead they overdid the effort and created a bit of a mess. To wit: individually the performances are good, but the dialogue and direction want for lack of finesse. Take for example the two chicks, Sam and Joe, who together (in character) do not a faux Meg Ryan make, despite all their attempts. This is the director's fault, who should have let Ms. Ryan's type go and tried for something historically correct and original . And the cut is wrong, because there is no tension or build-up along the way, as we are led through irrelevant adolescent-like romances, annoyingly. We want a film about wine, not whine. Plus the film fails to make us believe it's 1976; the dialogue style is much too current, the music too long-forgotten. The little gimmick of run-down cars in Napa is very overdone -- one VW Bug example is enough. Such a disappointment when the fun parts are in the ending credits where they let us in on the actual people's lives. The rest of the film is, well, just a sad little mess, casting a bright light on the author's, director's, and editor's ambitions or pretensions.