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Wine Country
May. 13th, 2019 03:24 pmI looked forward to Amy Poehler’s Wine Country so much that I prepared two separate sets of wine & nibbles to go with it: I was so excited about its release that I somehow moved said release up a day in my mind. (But we ended up having that first set of nibbles as we watched Wings, so it worked out all right.)
Possibly no movie could have lived up to this amount of expectation. But Wine Country in particular couldn’t bear up under the weight: the movie is competently mediocre, but nothing special.
In particular, it’s not very funny. Given the sheer density of SNL veterans involved with the production, you’d think it would be hilarious, but it isn’t particularly. Some of the attempts at humor are painfully awkward, like middle-aged Val’s determined pursuit of a cute young waitress… which seems to be going well, till it turns out that the waitress is funding her art career by dabbling in prostitution and views Val as a possible client. She offers to cut her rate for Val from $800 to a mere $600.
I think Poehler was aiming for hilarious yet heartfelt dramedy and ended up leaning just a little too hard on the drama part for the movie to be really funny - and yet not hard enough for it to quite work as a serious movie.
Oh well. At least the nibbles were good. We had smoked salmon, and dates stuffed with goat cheese, and gougeres - which is a savory choux pastry with cheese. Good stuff!
Possibly no movie could have lived up to this amount of expectation. But Wine Country in particular couldn’t bear up under the weight: the movie is competently mediocre, but nothing special.
In particular, it’s not very funny. Given the sheer density of SNL veterans involved with the production, you’d think it would be hilarious, but it isn’t particularly. Some of the attempts at humor are painfully awkward, like middle-aged Val’s determined pursuit of a cute young waitress… which seems to be going well, till it turns out that the waitress is funding her art career by dabbling in prostitution and views Val as a possible client. She offers to cut her rate for Val from $800 to a mere $600.
I think Poehler was aiming for hilarious yet heartfelt dramedy and ended up leaning just a little too hard on the drama part for the movie to be really funny - and yet not hard enough for it to quite work as a serious movie.
Oh well. At least the nibbles were good. We had smoked salmon, and dates stuffed with goat cheese, and gougeres - which is a savory choux pastry with cheese. Good stuff!
