Romance at the Vineyard

Good movie!

Good movie!

Good movie!

Found this movie on a midday slot midweek when I was home from work sick. This movie is bad. Every performance is awful, every character is awful, even the cinematography is bad. The grandparents accents change every line and there's zero chemistry between any of the actors, there's even a sweet scene staring out into the vineyard at night where you can almost see the sticky tape holding the picture of the moon in the sky with obviously fake plants in the foreground. All of that being said, its also hilarious, just unfortunately in a laughing at rather than with kind of way. I'm from a wine background and even half an hour talking to the people that own the vineyard where its shot would have saved most of the embarrassment. Stomping table grapes (not wine grapes) is probably why their business is doing so badly, plus testing for "oak sensitivity" which is categorically not a thing, but that's the minor stuff. There's just endless out of place jargon in every scene that makes your brain bend. In the end (spoiler alert) the business is saved, mostly through wearing chinos and blue sweaters with your leg up on something while staring into the distance. On a side note: The weird use of jargon, reused stereotypes and storylines and plastic dialogue makes me think that this was actually written by ChatGPT. There's no way a human wrote something this bad.

This is not a good film. The story is silly, the script is bad, the acting is poor (although the female lead gives it a game try) and the musical score is horrible. Production values are distinctly dodgy. The story: A family vineyard is holding out after surrounding vineyards have all been bought up by a Big Bad Business (BBB) which has turned them into tourist destinations which no longer produce wine but do make money. Shock, horror. But this year's production has been damaged by our heroine, the granddaughter, because she neglected something to do with casks. BBB's ace acquisitions guy arrives, with fake name, and rapidly sees the error of his ways so helps turn out a brilliant wine blend in four, yes, four days. I know nothing about wine production but this seems unlikely. Amazingly, heroine was annoyed with hero, although he saved everyone's bacon, because he lied to her about his job, passing lightly over the fact that she'd serially lied to her grandparents about almost everything. At the time of posting this there are no other reviews but the rating is 6.8, which is bewildering and leads me to suspect ballot box stuffing.

She sees a guy, for the first time, obviously likes him, which is OK. Then, before the first day is over, she proceeds to tell him basically everything about herself, about her business, as if she was a five year old who doesn't know better. Of course, at this point you know that this will be the reason why she will feel "betrayed" towards the end of the film, like it usually happens in these films. In some instances "stupid" works, the plot and characters draw you in, make you ignore the exaggerations and mistakes. However, in this case, nothing is believable. It is way too stupid. The main character is just idiotic and naive and the actress playing her is weird looking and bland. The brother is immature. The "bad boss" is ridiculous, more of a comic book villain. I won't go into more details, almost every scene is a new afront to common sense. I don't know much about the wine industry and vineyards but I hope none of this ever happens, it doesn't make sense. A final note is about the actors: they are all bad. Probably the "least bad" is the male lead. The grandparents are weird, their accents change in every scene, I don't understand what they are supposed to be. If you want something to watch and relax, this isn't it. If you have stuff to do and this runs in the background, go for it.