Sideways (Alexander Payne)
I was initially not too impressed with Sideways, beginning as it does in a very shallow “two dudes hit the road to par-tay!” mode, but this is eventually eased off as the film shifts into darker, sometimes even metaphysical territory. I think in context the opening is given something of a get out of jail free (maybe more like a get out of jail for £10) card by the much richer second half, in which the apparent shallow qualities of the former are given some depth and meaning.
The film does suffer from a tonal imbalance, where it can't quite decide if it wants to be a light hearted buddy movie or an absurdist black comedy, and there are helpings of both coming at the audience in awkward rhythms which I don't think the writer/director is quite able to pull off. I think this is also in part down to the acting, which is highly uneven, like the actors have emotional on/off switches they keep accidentally knocking against the furniture during conversations.
There are, conversely, scenes that are both cleverly written and movingly portrayed. One very intimate interaction between Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen, ostensibly about why they like their favourite wines, has a subtlety and complexity that the film manages to reach only in its very best moments, and this can leave some other parts of the film feeling a little dull by comparison.
The problems with this film cannot be solely attributed to the uneven writing and acting, much of the time I found the music to be far and away the worst offender, often becoming intrusive in scenes that would have been better silent. A lot of the more poignant or even funny moments, even in the scene I mentioned above, are abruptly foreshortened by incoming music “bits”, and I use that word because there doesn't seem to be a score so much as a pool of stock bits they dip into from time to time.
Watching Sideways, there is this nagging feeling I can't quite shake, and the feeling is that I'm watching a “serious” film which borrows some of the aesthetic values of '90s teen comedy. For me it does have enough good stuff in it to outweigh the bad overall, and it did make me laugh out loud many times, but it is not the film it seems to want to be, and I think many of its themes, particularly depression, anxiety, loneliness, and writing, have all been explored better by Charlie Kaufman in his films Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York.
Ultimately, Sideways is pretty good, but it should be great.