"Under the Tuscan Son of 'Sideways.' "

That's one way to think of "A Good Year," Ridley Scott's unfathomable adaptation of Peter Mayle's novel. Unfathomable because what on paper looks like such a sure-fire formula -- France, romance, wine and Russell Crowe -- falls as flat as a bottle of corked Bordeaux. (See Film Notes on Page 41.)

Crowe plays Max Skinner, a high-powered London broker who inherits a gorgeous chateau and vineyard in Provence; it's a measure of Max's impoverished spirit that he considers this bad news. When the harried exec travels to France to sell the property, he crosses paths with all manner of characters, local and otherwise: the vineyard's manager and his voluptuous wife; a fetching young American who may or may not be his cousin (played by a weirdly surly-looking Abbie Cornish); and a ravishing waitress he almost runs over in what she insists on calling his "leetle car."

Scott and Crowe, who last worked together on "Gladiator," should have stuck with the togas; Crowe runs the emotional gamut from bored to perplexed to just plain miserable in a romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor comic. Things perk up a little when Albert Finney and Freddie Highmore show up in Max's flashbacks, but for the most part, "A Good Year" is plonk.

-- Ann Hornaday (Nov. 9, 2006)

Contains profanity and sexual content.