Sideways.. a Hilarious comedy.. with a modest cast of actors and
a script well structured to fit the budget.
It's a story of two friends, Jack (Thomas Hayden church) and Miles ( Paul Giamatti )
who go out on a roadtrip which is kind of a part of Jack's bachelor party, with all the
right intentions of getting laid on the freeway before he is subjected to the eternal bondage.
The whole movie is about how this trip changes the lives of these two friends, how they
help out each other to realize what they actually want. Not much of an eye opener, but
more effectively a good-break from the regular stream of life that can change their
perspectives for ever.
Characters...
The main character of the story, Miles is a Highschool teacher, who aspires to be a
writer, and gets as close as a struggling writer, who's been rejected his entire life
is someone who is usually mistaken to be a loser. He had a bad break-up with his
wife two years ago and since then landed up in a depression and these rejections
just add up to his negativity. As, the movie progresses the script starts unvieling the
shades of his character and the his addiction to "wine" and his latent traits of depression.

Jack's..character on the other hand is quite opposite to Miles, it's a regular formula
for comic flicks, when you put two characters that are so unlike each other, every
contrasting opinion or situation they encounter can have a lot of humour.
For instance
In "Mid Night Cowboy", the straight forward country kid "john void" and the
complicated thief "Dustin Hoffman".
In Butch cassidy and sundace Kid, "Robert Redford" as the calm, quick handed "sundace",
"Paul Newman" being the talkative, ebullient and smart "butch"
This formula when put in to use effectively is a great tool to generate on screen humour and
after a point when audience are aware of these contrast even a normal scene which
doesn't have any contrasting opinions will look funny.
So, Jack's character is one of those soap-opera regulars who now is doing add films
and fishing for new contracts, an easy going, adventerous and slighlty dumb actor.

The writer, uses his knowledge of Wine's to create so many scenes and portraying Jack as
a person who just wants to drink the whole bottle rather than being a connosieur like Miles
which just exposes the contrast again.

"Maya's"(Virginia Madsen) character.. She is a middle single women, who works as a waitress
in a bar and also takes college to graduate in 'Horti culture". She becomes the love interest of
Miles, and the author shows how difficult it is for miles, who's portrayed as a born looser, to consider "Moving-On" In life as an option. His inhibitions, add to so much humor and paul has done a great job in portraying this character.

All in all, a good movie, with so much to learn from the script.
It just shows how a good concept can nullify the need for big time stars and
Hi-fi Sets...