It’s a wonderful true story: in 1976, Napa vintner Jim Barrett was on the verge of losing his winery, Chateau Montelena, when his Chardonnay won first place in a blind wine-tasting in Paris—over many sterling French wines—earning an international reputation for Chateau Montelena and the entire California wine industry. But filmmaker Randall Miller, and co-scriptwriters Jody Savin and Ross Schwartz, take this marvelous story, with all its Old vs. New World cultural dynamics, and turn it into a goofy stoner comedy about a bunch of hippies who save the day. Bill Pullman plays Barrett as an angsty perfectionist who’ll have to suck it up and go back to the corporate world in defeat if his winemaking dream doesn’t pan out. But son, Bo (Chris Pine) is centerstage, a long-haired slacker who hasn’t made much of his life of ease. (He and the other field workers are always gathered round a campfire at night, like refugees from Camp Woodstock.) Bo’s best bud, Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez), son of a Mexican field hand, has such an educated palate, he’s working on his own vintage in secret. Leggy new intern, Sam (Rachael Taylor), becomes third Musketeer to (and potential romantic wedge between) Bo and Gustavo. (In the most egregious scene, Sam grapples with a hose in her short, tight, Daisy Mae cut-offs, while the male workers ogle her like slack-jawed Neanderthals contemplating dinner.) Meanwhile, in Paris, English wine snob Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) concocts the idea of inviting some chi-chi Parisian oenophiles to a blind wine tasting as a publicity stunt for his under-achieving wine shop. Egged on by an American expat neighbor (Dennis Farina), Spurrier journeys reluctantly to Napa for local wines to invite to the event. Farina is loads of fun, and Rickman runs through his entire entertaining catalogue of vague sneers and unctuous pauses. (His silent encounter with a dubious KFC product is the funniest minute of the movie). Rodriguez is wry and grounded as the ambitious Gustavo (despite a corny dirt-under-your-fingernails lecture he presumes to give Jim), and the sun-dappled wine country looks splendid. But pedestrian storytelling relies too often on clichéd dialogue and lame comic set-ups. (At the local bar where Bo and Gustavo frequently hustle Gustavo’s ability to identify a wine at one taste, don’t the regulars know not to bet against him by now?) And derelict pacing makes the film seem jumpy and endless, turning this promising grape of a story into bulk wine.

(**) (R) 106 minutes.

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