"Sideways"

Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh shine in this wannabe adult comedy, but director Alexander Payne ("About Schmidt") proves again that he's a pretentious wiseass.

By Charles Taylor

Oct 15, 2004 | Alexander Payne's new movie, "Sideways," makes you feel like you're trapped at dinner with a wiseass who's trying to convince you what a sensitive guy he is. The film, which opens theatrically next Wednesday after closing this year's New York Film Festival, isn't as overtly contemptuous of the people on-screen as was Payne's last movie, "About Schmidt." I'm sure that Payne even believes he's showing them compassion. But except for a few of Paul Giamatti's moments -- and everything Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh do -- "Sideways" consists of Payne scoring points off his characters.

Payne has hit on a foolproof method for getting away with his cheap shots: He disguises them in the sheep's clothing of "observational" comedy. "Sideways" isn't a bash. It's not loud or raucous, and since it appears to be about something -- how people who've been bruised choose not to give up -- it can fool audiences into thinking it's an adult comedy. That's how Payne gets away with his juvenile superiority -- and even the fat-girls-like-it-up-the-ass jokes that would be called raunchy and gross (as they are) if they appeared in a teen comedy. Payne has such an adolescent fixation on what is and isn't phony that the movies may at last have found the filmmaker capable of bringing J.D. Salinger to the screen (that isn't a compliment).

The chief phony here is Paul Giamatti's Miles, a junior high English teacher and aspiring novelist whose only confidence in life comes from his knowledge of wines. He can go on and on about his disdain for cabernet, or why pinot noir is a white wine, but let him give the smallest description of his novel -- he calls it an autobiographical account of his father's stroke that devolves into a Robbe-Grillet mystery -- and you know the thing will never be published. Miles' best friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), is a self-absorbed actor (is there any other kind in comedy? Couldn't someone write an actor as a decent person for a change?) whose career has gone from soap opera to commercial voice-overs. Jack is about to get married, and Miles, his best man, plans a farewell-to-bachelorhood trip for the two of them through California's wine country.

Jack makes it clear early on that he intends to use the trip to sow his last wild oats and settles on Stephanie (Sandra Oh), whom he meets in one of the vineyards he and Miles visit. Miles feels understandably scummy being party to his friend's deception (Jack isn't deceiving just his fiancée but also Stephanie, telling her he's in love with her), but he's too traumatized by his divorce to even consider getting lucky himself, even though Maya (Virginia Madsen), a waitress at one of Miles' favorite restaurants, clearly likes him.

Some of the details in "Sideways" verge on the painfully accurate, from Miles' cramped and cluttered divorced-guy's apartment to the stilted small talk he makes with Jack's prospective in-laws to the stilted small talk he makes on a date with Maya. Miles is more embarrassing when he tries to be a regular guy than when he's showing off his wine knowledge. But Payne and his writing partner, Jim Taylor, who adapted the film from Rex Pickett's novel, hold themselves at a distance from Miles and Jack. And there isn't any pleasure to be had in watching people whom you haven't been made to care about making fools of themselves.

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