Flicks and Flights: Love Wine

The Flick: "Love Wine" directed by Mark McNabb, starring Tara Goudreau and Daneen Boone

The Flight: Narramata Bench Fortified Wine, Pelee Island Pinot Noir,

It's hard not to include this film in our Flicks and Flights series as the central plot is certainly about wine: a young woman inherits a family-owned winery and must fulfill contractual obligations to make love on the grapes at first harvest (yes, literally, make love on the grapes). However, I must warm you what you're getting yourself into if you decide to rent or otherwise seek-out this film. Simply put, it's bad, really bad. Even the "so bad it's good" novelty wears off about 45 minutes into the film as the oh-my-god giggles transition to mouth-open-aghast embarrassment for all parties involved including the many Pelee Island locals who undoubtedly hadn't read the script before signing up to be apart of such a poorly executed film.

Beyond the amateur acting and direction, it's the very concept of Love Wine that is so silly it becomes insulting to one's intellect. Notions like pouring one's passion into the production of wine should remain a parable. It's one thing to romanticize the craft of winemaking and compare it to an act of love. It's another to actually create a plot around the physical execution of said grape-christening. Surely it's against any number of agricultural codes (one would hope). In any case, the plot is fairly predictable once put in motion and meanders from one silly situation to another until the inevitable "happy ending". 

The Love Wine Drinking Game:

1. Finish the bottle of Fortified Wine... Before the film starts. Seriously, you're gonna need a significant buzz to survive the world of well-meaning-but-completely-clueless-amateur-hour-filmmaking that is Love Wine.
2. Take a sip of Pinot Noir every time… You grab for the remote to fast-forward through an awkward "acting" moment or extended dialog sequence.
3. Finish the bottle of Pinot Noir… When you start to get sick at the thought of actually drinking a glass of wine that was made from grapes that came in contact with the naked body parts of strangers (and all their various bodily secretions) before arriving at your lips. Disgusting.

- Liam Carrier ©copyright 2012 IconWines.ca