Imagine, if you can, a movie about two unattractive, gross women slobs going on a week-long spree and ending up with Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck. Imagine that becoming a hit, nominated for five Academy Awards, acclaimed by critics.
Wait, don't even try. It ain't gonna happen.
The ladies love them? Thomas Haden Church, left, and Paul Giamatti play former freshman roommates who forgot to grow up.
(Merie W. Wallace -- Fox Searchlight Pictures Via AP)
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"Sideways," the low-budget Oscar contender, is a guys' movie that celebrates a certain cultural fantasy: Set off on a drinking-carousing-debauching adventure for a week with your buddy, seduce two great-looking girls and then dump them and go home. What fun!
The reviews were fabulous, and then Charles Krauthammer wrote a whole column about it on the op-ed page, calling it "sublime . . . intelligent . . . clever, funny, moving." He concluded, "Trust me on this one. See it."
I did. I hated it. And it wasn't just me. Most of the women I know feel the same way.
The two leads, played by Thomas Haden Church and Paul Giamatti, are losers. They are unattractive -- at times repulsive -- stupid, and gross. They are also untalented, cowardly liars with no sense of humor. They are self-absorbed, undisciplined, navel-gazing failures. They have no redeeming qualities.
And yet, and yet -- moviegoing audiences and the Academy Awards have embraced them. Contrasted with costly special-effects films, "Sideways" is being celebrated as a movie about "real life."
Real life? I don't think so.
For a look at real life, consider the off-Broadway play "Fat Pig." It's about a fat girl who falls in love with a cute guy, who returns her interest. But even so, and even though she offers to get her stomach stapled for him, he still dumps her because he is ashamed of what his friends will think of him. Let's face it, men don't have fantasies of having a fat slob for a girlfriend.
So why is it audiences will buy the reverse?
There are two great-looking women in "Sideways," played by Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen. They are treated badly by the two jerks, who were freshman roommates and have apparently never gotten past a freshman state of mind. Miles, the middle-aged Giamatti character, even steals money from his mother. On a visit home, he slips upstairs, leaving her with his boorish friend, and takes a wad of cash from her dresser drawer. This guy has no shame.
While the single mother played by Oh, flirtatious and desperate for a dad for her kid, might possibly fall for the former soap star Jack (Church), it is inconceivable that the Madsen character, named Maya, would ever look twice at a creep like Miles.
Okay, they share a love of the grape. But Miles, it becomes clear, is also an alcoholic. Just another reason Maya would not be attracted to him.
At the end of the movie, Miles begins a correspondence with Maya in which he bares his soul and confesses what a loser he is. He confesses everything except that he stole money from his mother. Then, in a burst of courage, he jumps in his car, speeds up the coast to the wine country and in the final scene, we see him pounding on Maya's door.
It was all I could do not to shout, "Don't answer it, Maya! For God's sake, don't answer it!"
But we know she will. She'll open the door and fall into his arms.
I propose another ending: a gooey lemon meringue pie right in the kisser.
