Post by Noah on Apr 19, 2005 8:57:43 GMT -5
Just saw this for the first time. It came very heavily recommended.
Paul Giamatti really is excellent. His performance is completely convincing. He's a wonderful, unlikely movie star, and I'm glad he's getting work. He has that quality so rare in American actors -- the ability to play an average guy who looks like an average guy. We tend to breed cowboys and other hero types, but Giamatti can play an accountant or a schoolteacher or a cartoonist, and there's no need to suspend disbelief in the face of Hollywood sex appeal.
Sideways has some outstanding moments, and it is always nice to see a real story about real people. It's not pat or overproduced, and the script (co-written by the director, Alexander Payne, whose Election I liked very much) is intelligent and witty. It's worth seeing.
But I have to say, the cliche of the embittered schlemiel is just about as tired as the cliche of stylish Hollywood romance. I'm really tired of having filmmakers ask me to feel sorry for a lovelorn guy who's screwed up his relationships with women by being an asshole. Giamatti's talents are such that I did root for him throughout Sideways. But the film presents him as a good and decent guy -- who steals cash from his mother's dresser drawer. His character, Miles, is devastated over the recent remarriage of his ex-wife, but all we sense is that he's lonely and wants her back. There's no sense of remorse over the fact that he cheated on her and threw the relationship away.
I love Woody Allen and Charlie Chaplin, and the whole comedic history of little heartbroken guys striking out with women. I have a high tolerance for that stuff. But it's hard to sympathize with the romantic angst of a character who doesn't seem to deserve the relationships he lusts after. Part of the reason you want Harry and Sally to get together is because you know they'd be happy. In the case of Sideways, you're not so sure.
That having been said, one of the movie's strengths is that it's not a slick, predictable product. By the end of the film, perhaps Miles has suffered into truth. But for most of the two hours leading up to that, he just suffers.
Paul Giamatti really is excellent. His performance is completely convincing. He's a wonderful, unlikely movie star, and I'm glad he's getting work. He has that quality so rare in American actors -- the ability to play an average guy who looks like an average guy. We tend to breed cowboys and other hero types, but Giamatti can play an accountant or a schoolteacher or a cartoonist, and there's no need to suspend disbelief in the face of Hollywood sex appeal.
Sideways has some outstanding moments, and it is always nice to see a real story about real people. It's not pat or overproduced, and the script (co-written by the director, Alexander Payne, whose Election I liked very much) is intelligent and witty. It's worth seeing.
But I have to say, the cliche of the embittered schlemiel is just about as tired as the cliche of stylish Hollywood romance. I'm really tired of having filmmakers ask me to feel sorry for a lovelorn guy who's screwed up his relationships with women by being an asshole. Giamatti's talents are such that I did root for him throughout Sideways. But the film presents him as a good and decent guy -- who steals cash from his mother's dresser drawer. His character, Miles, is devastated over the recent remarriage of his ex-wife, but all we sense is that he's lonely and wants her back. There's no sense of remorse over the fact that he cheated on her and threw the relationship away.
I love Woody Allen and Charlie Chaplin, and the whole comedic history of little heartbroken guys striking out with women. I have a high tolerance for that stuff. But it's hard to sympathize with the romantic angst of a character who doesn't seem to deserve the relationships he lusts after. Part of the reason you want Harry and Sally to get together is because you know they'd be happy. In the case of Sideways, you're not so sure.
That having been said, one of the movie's strengths is that it's not a slick, predictable product. By the end of the film, perhaps Miles has suffered into truth. But for most of the two hours leading up to that, he just suffers.