"It's you, dude."

For the last two years, people have insisted -- insisted, I tell you -- that I ought watch the film Sideways. At some point, the DVD thereof landed in my life and was filed away with all the other films to watch.

This film was presented to me as charming and clever and sophisticated and oh-so-funny. In a certain way, these descriptions were slightly inaccurate in that this film was dull and depressing, instead.

OMG.

Was this ever dull and depressing. I don't want to say it's singularly unfunny, because it had two scenes which made me smirk approvingly, but these were hardly worth the two-hour hole it cut in my life. For those of you who've been spared a viewing of this film, Paul Giamatti is the schlubby writer who is taking his semi-famous actor friend, Thomas Haden Church, for a One Last Trip up in the wine country, before this friend (THC) gets married. The plan is to go to assorted wineries and sample the various varietals and vintages, etc.

Only THC has other plans. He just wants to, er, get things out of his system. This means we wind up getting a lot more coverage of THC than we bargained for, and just try getting that out of your system. PG's character is unattractive and grating, a neurotic loser who can't get his novel published and cannot get over the fact his wife left him. Somehow these Hardy Boys manage to meet up with Virginia Madsen -- who is trying extra hard to not look ridiculously attractive -- and Sandra Oh, respectively. They go out on a few double dates and while PG is trying to sort out how he feels about VM (who is obviously, if inexplicably, interested in PG's character), THC and SO start having sex at every imaginable opportunity.

Other than being treated to a view of THC's bare buttocks while in flagrante delicto, nothing funny happens here.

Then VM finds out that THC is getting married and tells SO who takes her motorcycle helmet and bashes up THC, who winds up in the hospital. VM is mad at PG for being an accomplice and tells him to buzz off. PG, who is on the edge to begin with, gets all depressed and starts drinking those fancy-ass bottles of wine they discussed. Then VM changes her mind and calls PG, who drives back up to her place. The End.

Nice, huh?

I wouldn't have minded all the emotional baggage weighing down the film, if it had been actually funny. Which, I hasten to add, it was not. The problem is that the acting is actually pretty good, so you get to really revel in the loser-ishness and the aforementioned emotional baggage of the moribund screenplay.

So, um, don't watch this film. Have some wine, instead.

-J.