I enjoyed Bottle Shock (2008), but it is one of those movies that you could write a positive review about or, if you got started on the other foot, write a negative review. The mish-mash of critics on Rotten Tomatoes web site give it only 45% fresh tomatoes, not worth watching because of all the clichés. On the other hand, Roger Ebert, a most respected popular critic, gives it 3.5 out of 4, well worth watching for its enthusiasm and basis in fact.
I enjoyed the way a group of relatively unknown film makers were so confident in their movie making. The patriotic story of how the underdog American wine industry beat the snobby French in a blind tasting in the 1970s could be accused of too much flag waving, and it was, but the film makers played the patriotism card for all it was worth. An opening shot swooping over numerous Napa Valley vineyards might raise the critical objection that the film is an advertisement for the California wine industry, and it did, but the film makers don’t care—it is just fun to see all those rows of grape vines. Sometimes this really works. as when the film makers have to decide how to introduce the panel of French judges who will taste the wine. The film makers decide to have the host, a wine merchant originally from England, to read in his mediocre French the name and title of each judge, slowly but surely. This emphasizes what a foreign environment the fledgling California wines have been dropped into.
I cannot give an enthusiastic recommendation to Bottle Shock because it could have been so much more. Sure, the jaunty, cheeky attitude is appropriate for upstart wine makers, but it saps any rigor from the film. Sure, the Barbie doll blonde who apprentices in the fields is nice to look at, but her romances with two workers at the winery turns out to be a distraction from what the movie should have been about. How did the American wines manage to beat the French? We never know. Seriously, we never learn that. And isn’t that what the movie should have as its substance?