Bottle Shock

Bottle Shock is more than the story. It is also about people who love their work, care about it with passion and talk about it with knowledge.

Beautifully shot by Michael J. Ozier, the dominating taste in Bottle Shock is Rickman's beautiful performance as a snob - a snob who is secretly open to being delightfully surprised.

Whatta movie: booze, unhappy French people, Alan Rickman and really cool pickup trucks.

Trouble is, it's too rambling and digressive to feel focused, yet too calculating to feel as observational and natural as a good Altman flick.

Wine may be sunlight held together by water, as Galileo said, but Bottle Shock is held together only by Alan Rickman.

A great story - and a true one, more or less - Bottle Shock nonetheless fails to deliver much in the way of entertainment.

This schlocky period piece doesn't do the pioneering Northern Californians justice. The script is overwritten to the point of parody.

I really enjoyed this little film. I had never heard of the film before but someone recommended it to me so I gave it a shot. What I found was a good comedy fueled by charm and heart (reminded me a lot of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen). The performances were also good; Rickman does a great job and Bill Pullman gives a really good performance as a Napa winemaker. Wine lover or not, I completely recommend this movie.

I'm giving this 2 stars just because the film covers an important, historical turning point for American wine production, and nothing else. Poorly written, oddly paced, crammed with bizarre plot devices (father & son outdoor boxing ring???), clichéd characterizations and silly inventions that do a huge disservice to the events they inaccurately portray. Points added for Rickman and Pullman, who did their best to lend a bit of dignity to the farcical script and weak dialog. The real Steven Spurrier and Jim & Bo Barret deserved much, much better, and so did the wine industry.