Everything's just vine

The fact that 'Sideways' is a film about, amongst other things, that splendid elixir wine is something I'd forgotten. So it was more serendipity (note: must use that word more) than good planning that we smuggled two bottles of plonk into the cinema on Monday to accompany our viewing of the film.

To be honest, though, being able to sip from tumblers of Ernest & Julio Gallo Sauvignon Blanc (2003 vintage, purchased from that well-respected vintners Sainsburys) was merely an added bonus - there's not much that could enhance the pleasure that this movie serves up.

Paul Giamatti plays Miles, a paunchy, sensible-trousered and recently divorced English teacher who is trying and failing to find a publisher for his first novel. Throw in his enormous gusto for wine and it was like looking into a horrible kind of future for me.

Thomas Haden Church is Miles's friend Jack (this is a strange kind of buddy / road movie), a washed-up actor who trades on his fading good looks and charm, talks and dresses like an embarrassingly overgrown and overaged "surfer dude", and follows his cock around like a dowsing rod.

Jack is due to get married in a week's time, so Miles arranges for them to head up into northern California to visit vineyards and sample the local produce. Jack takes that to mean women as well as wine.

It's a film about mid-life crisis of the exclusively male variety, and as such might give impressionable forty-somethings the idea that all they need to reinvent themselves as sex machines is a few lurid Hawaiian shirts or an extensive knowledge of classy booze. However, the ridiculousness of Jack's behaviour and manner (in particular) is always apparent.

In 'About Schmidt', director Alexander Payne has already done something like this before, though that featured an older if equally directionless male protagonist. 'Sideways' is an adaptation of a Rex Pickett novel, and Payne had a big hand in writing the screenplay. Having not read the novel, I'm not sure how much has been changed, but certainly similarities to 'About Schmidt' are in evidence, not least the way the narrative edges towards a bleak conclusion only for a sudden brilliant ray of light to shine down at the last moment. Zach Braff and those involved with 'Garden State' take note: THAT's how to bring an offbeat romantic comedy to a stylish close.

So, engaging plot, excellent directing, vintage performances (sorry), memorable dialogue, affecting, beautifully observed, funny...