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Holy Matrimony
BACHELOR WEEK IN WINE COUNTRY
Alexander Payne's new movie, Sideways, follows Miles (Paul Giamatti), a divorced failed novelist and wine enthusiast, on what he hopes will be a week of genteel bonding in Santa Barbara wine country with soon-to-be-married college friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church). Jack, an actor on the fast track to has-been-hood, has a different agenda. He wants to get laid, and when two attractive locals—Maya (Virginia Madsen) and Stephanie (Sandra Oh)—enter the picture, the long-overdue coming-of-age bender is afoot.
If Sideways manages to flirt with cliche but not run off with it, it's because the premise isn't so much "What if two aging buddies got drunk and chased girls?" as "What if the guy from Ned and Stacey and the guy from American Splendor were best friends?" The buddy-flick formula would demand that they meet in the middle, but the strength of the film is that they don't, really. Payne still prefers excess to moderation, whether it's Miles's misanthropic wino-ism or Jack's almost philosophical conviction that there's nothing a good screw can't fix. The few lapses into sappiness—an overwrought winemaking-as-metaphor monologue, notably—are mostly redeemed by wit and insight. Sideways is no morality tale, but it has a moral center in the protagonists' unlikely, hardy friendship, beautifully played by Giamatti and Church. Payne, having long ago mastered satire, in films such as About Schmidt, continues here to seek out compassion, which has proved more elusive. (Rating: ★★★)
EVE EPSTEIN
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