Review: Sideways

Ludicrous overpraising aside, Sideways really is a rather marginal exploration of male friendship and middle-aged anxieties. Despite some pretty terrific performances (from all but the overrated Thomas Haden Church, still playing his airplane handyman it seems) and a couple of wonderful sequences, Sideways suffers from Alexander Payne's recurring broad brushstrokes. Everything he sees or conceives of seems to be presented in the most reductive, anti-intellectual way possible. He seems to like these characters a bit more than in his other films, but he still seems to look down upon nearly everyone he sees. He still doesn't know how to shoot a picture (Sideways is as boring, formally, as everything else he's done). Sideways is saved from complete uselessness mostly by Giamatti, still great, even working with such underripe material as this.

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