To borrow a line from Thomas Haden Church’s Jack, Sideways is “two tons of fun.” But when the critical gushing really got into high gear, the little voice got louder, finally suggesting that maybe this Emperor, though certainly possessed of a gifted wine palate, was actually short on threads. Lest you think me a simple contrarian, I’ll state for the record that I’m all for critical consensus. Best film of the sound period: Citizen Kane? Sure. If any single film has to occupy such a ludicrously superlative station, why not Kane? Consensus has the power of focusing attention via strength in numbers. What haunts the obverse side of the overwhelming enthusiasm for Sideways is a hollow reflex on the part of the critic who likes to focus attention on this kind of film, overlooking that this particular iteration, though fun and more-of-the-same, both falls short of Alexander Payne’s best and threatens to bloat this tentative “genre” irreparably.

Recognizing a trend, Richard Schickel wrote in his August 2003 TIme review of American Splendor, “Punch-Drunk Love, Adaptationand About Schmidt are all bleak comedies about emotionally stunned or stunted people trying, in their herky-jerky ways, to avoid a completely comatose condition.” A year later, thanks primarily to the casting of Paul Giamatti, Splendor has met Schmidt in the form of Sideways, adding yet another to Schickel’s list. Yet amidst all the accolades, one finds surprisingly few suggestions that the tone and approach of these films may have started to move from “edgy” to “tired.”

Sideways heralds a point of exhaustion: the undoubtedly talented Paul Giamatti playing yet another piteous schlub. Were the only antecedents for his performance Storytelling and American Splendor, the evidence would be ample enough, but the litany is longer—from sad sack everyman in search of karaoke redemption in Duets, to whiney, cynical hostage in The Negotiator and whiney, cynical ape in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. So while it’s difficult to begrudge the man his due in the form of this latest role he clearly seems born to play, isn’t it fair that more of us wonder aloud if we haven’t had enough already of this poor bastard in his various guises?

As to the broader questions of Payne’s oeuvre and our current cultural gusto for the fashionably depressed, I don’t share Charles Taylor’s (Salon.com) assertion that Payne exhibits outright contempt for his characters. There’s something more sympathetic, if ambivalent, in the tone of our collective laughter at their foibles than Taylor acknowledges. I’m also appreciative of Payne’s own statements to the effect that what people deem “dark” in his films is more accurately a form of honesty. After all, it takes some chutzpah to have your protagonist purchase a copy of “Barely Legal” without a shred of moral equivocation.

One does question the relative value of exploring the inadequacies of Giamatti’s Miles Raymond as compared to plumbing the far richer nooks and crannies of Jack Nicholson’s Warren Schmidt. Indeed, it is the disparity between the respective critical receptions of the two films which seems most beguiling, or perhaps most revelatory. About Schmidt was well received, as you’ll recall, particularly in connection with Nicholson’s performance, but prompted nowhere near the degree of fawning engendered by Sideways. Yet there seems so much more in the former film which might actually warrant our return to it in 10 or 20 years’ time. At its center is the masterful transformation of everyone’s beloved Lakers-loving wiseass, “Jack,” into the Chaplin-inspired stranger to his own life, Warren Schmidt, arguably one of the most resonant figures of dissipating patriarchal utility since Willy Loman.

Schmidt’s Winnebago road jaunt is a true quest, gold watch and dead wife driving home how little he actually comprehends about anything, least of all himself. In contrast, one feels that Miles, though certainly flush with denial and self-delusion, knows the score deep down in his gut. We suspect he’s savoring the masochistically mortifying drunken phone calls to his ex in the same way he does his ‘61 Cheval Blanc swilled from cheap Styrofoam. And for this we can laugh alternately with and at him but find it hard to muster true empathy. Anal sex, full-frontals, and tasting-bucket chugging aside, Sideways is after all the story of just another white, middle-aged crackpot, woe-is-me-ing his way through wine country in his Saab, shallow actor buddy in tow. C’mon people, yawn with me.

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