Bottle Shock

An enjoyable, if not memorable film about the events leading up to a historic blind taste competition between French and Californian wines. Alan Rickman is stupendous as Brit living in Paris who organizes the event as a way to drum up business for his fading wine emporium. Most of the action takes place in Napa where an eccentric mix of societal drop-outs have taken to becoming vintners. Bill Pullman is also very good as the head of the main vineyard. The parts of the film about wine and winemaking were pretty interesting and I enjoyed nearly everything that Rickman and Pullman did in the movie. Most of the screentime, however, goes to Chris Pine. In a bad wig and playing an uninspired post-hippie loser. The arc for his character is LITERALLY trying to not be a loser. There is a perfunctory love triangle story with him and Freddy Rodriguez that seems to go nowhere. It just seems like stuff they threw in because the wine part wasn't long enough.