Review of Sideways (2004) by Mollym — 17 Oct 2006

I heard all of the hype about this movie and thought, hey, even though the premise sounds really lame, all of these critics can't be wrong, right? Wrong. Sideways is the story about two losers (who you can never quite like or respect) who go driving around California getting drunk and trying to hook up with sluts they find along the way, all the while trying to deal with their pathetic and self-created issues.

Hmm... sounds so interesting doesn't it? Nope, and it wasn't. At first it wasn't so bad, but the more I watched it, the more I felt like my sense of humanity was slowly and methodically being assaulted till, by the end, my friend and I looked at each other and apologized for suggesting we see the movie.

Several times throughout the viewing people in the audience would laugh, while my friend and I would look at each other in confusion, wondering if perhaps there was some other reality that we lived in that made it so we didn't think the weasels on screen were funny.

The shallowness of this movie seems to be epitomized by the scene when Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen's characters are out on the porch talking about their favorite wines and end up having a "deep" conversation.

I kept thinking, is this supposed to be some deep, poignant point in the movie? It was nothing big, nothing deep or insightful to anybody who is deep and insightful. Which apparently most of the reviewers are not.

.. I guess deep conversations and "meaningful issues" for a lot of movies are things that I think about and discuss with friends and family on regular basis, so maybe my life is just more complex and deep than I knew, because this movie wasn't impressive to me in the least.