Sideways

I had doubts paying for my ticket to see this movie. First, because I was going to watch a movie as a birthday treat for myself and my friends, and second, we were in Glorietta and tickets cost right about as much as a regular gold mine. So you see, I wanted the movie to be good. Desperately.

Looking at the promotional posters didn't assure me since one is this green bottle fallen to its side with a little man inside and the other is a picninc scene where none of the actors were drop dead gorgeous. Yes, I could get as petty as that. But we went to see it anyway, because I was with six girls and someone had to make up their minds. Hehe.

So glad we did. The theater is almost empty. Aside from the six of us, there were only seven other people in the theater. I was right about it not being much of a blockbuster here in the Philippines. Not with our inherent need to watch pretty actors and bold action shots. Who wants to watch an unattractive man living his mediocre life, eh? Turns out, I do.

Paul Giammati plays Miles -- a squat, pot-bellied wine enthusiast who brings his best friend Jack(played by Thomas Haden Church) to a wine-tasting tourney a week before the guy is to be married. Giammati's character is compassionate; a nice guy, really. But he's psychologically paralyzed due to a devastating divorce some years ago, and he's debilitated, evolved you may say, into a complete loser. Jack is a washed out actor whose last good role was a doctor on a daytime soap shown eons ago, but he's marrying an exotic beautiful woman anyway. To say he's childish is to overstate it. He acts like a teenager, and in the course of the movie, manages regress. Both men, safe to say, has peaked years ago, and are just about to plunge downwards. Or sideways.

During the trip, they meet two gorgeous women and we soon see two very different approaches to courting. The unabashed, horns on display style (Jack) and the "torpe", can-I-just-look-at-you-and-I-can-die-happy style (Miles). Have to give Kudos to Samantha Oh (Yep, that's her surname) and Virginia Madsen for playing their characters well-- characters that seems to prove women peak better than men. =P But the best thing about this movie is that it flows just like real life. You get a couple of laughs and then it'll turn serious. It's believably erratic. And it's the kind of movie which twists your stomach into painful knots, everytime you realize that mediocrity is just right around the corner. Or that you could be living it too, you're just using a different paint brush. Literally painfully true.

It's too bad it's not showing anymore. But if you do come across it again, do watch it. It's one heck of tasty punch.