Monday, May 20, 2019

Lo Hai Qu Reviews "Wine Country"


It seemed fitting to allow my intern (still!) Lo Hai Qu to review the recent Netflix movie, "Wine Country." It's been a long time since I've turned my blog over to her, but I'm happy to have her back. I've missed her.


So, my girlfriends Shizzangela and Loqueesha, and Loqueesha’s total loser cousin Klamydia, I mean Klamydia’s entire Instagram page is pictures of her ongoing armpit electrolysis trying to make her pit hair resemble Justin Bieber, wanted to come over to my house to watch “Wine Country.” What a stupid fucking idea, but they were bringing some Natural Wines, which means wines that Shizzangela would normally use to wash her Afro because they taste like someone threw up in your mouth, and they were determined to watch this flick with a bunch of girls because they heard it was like some sort of menopausal “Sideways.” I told them I hated “Sideways,” but I thought they were talking about sex not some other dumbass movie about wine.

First of all, movies about wine are always stupid and never about wine. Wine is boring. Ergo, wine movies is boring. Duh. They have one plot. Show how stupid people are about wine. I already know people are stupid about wine, I’m on the internet, for fuck’s sake. Whenever I watch a movie about wine I want to give up drinking wine. I hate the pretentious assholes they show, and I hate the other people in the movie who just like to drink wine, make fun of the pretentious wine people, and don’t care about wine, they just like to get drunk so they can talk like they’re all profound but all they’re really being is full of self-pity, all weepy and full of fake love and insight. In “Wine Country” the ladies spend way too much time getting drunk and all BrenĂ© Brown-nosing each other. Fuck, I hope I never get that old and annoying.

At least I didn’t pay to see “Wine Country” seeing as how I use my parents Netflix password. Netflix is spending like 5 gazillion dollars to make shows for its streaming service, so they still have 5 gazillion minus the $800 it took to make this movie Quaalude. So, I know how this flick got made, Amy Polar goes to some male exec at Neflix and makes this Hollywood movie pitch, “SNL chicks go to Napa Valley and barf on ‘Sideways.’” Guy says, “Sold!”  Amy Polar vortex goes to her buds and says, Hey, I got us a free trip to wine country where we just have to fake comedy for a few weeks. It’ll be fun and we get to hang out and get our butts kissed, drink a bunch, have a paid vacation girls trip, and I got Tina Fey to go for it because no one has heard of any of the rest of you for about ten years so people might actually watch this egofest.

We were all pretty bored by about half way through “Wine Country.” The movie is exactly like an episode of “Saturday Night Live.” You get all excited that it will be funny for 90 minutes, even though it never is, you turn it on and it has some cool guest host, the opening sketch is pretty funny, and then all the other sketches start to be a slog and you just start waiting for Michael Che cuz the only really funny people ever on SNL are the black people. Shizzangela has this thing for Michael Che, she has this sparkly tight T-Shirt she wears all the time that says, “Che Ate Here,” that’s kinda weird, especially when she wears the matching panties, but I get it. Anyways, “Wine Country” is like a longass episode of SNL without Weekend Update. There’s a sketch at a wine tasting bar, a sketch about paella, a sketch about a natural wine vineyard, a sketch about drunk friends in a bar and one falls off a piano, a sketch about an art show with stereotyped Millennials—fuck, that’s the tone deaf scene of the movie year, we’re much meaner than that. This movie didn’t need a director, it needed fucking Jack Kevorkian. Actually, it didn’t have a director, so there’s that.

So if, say, Shizzangela and Loqueesha and I turn 50 some day, which seems unlikely and scary and I don’t really want to end up like those women in “Wine Country,” all rich and spoiled and suffering from some illusion that they’re Everywoman, and we go to Napa Valley for a long weekend, without that crazy fucking Klamydia who is now learning to be a ventriloquist and sneaks up on you with her armpit and makes it say, “Kiss me, I’m Justin Bieber,” the first thing we’re not going to do is hire a driver. There is a guy in the movie who comes with the house?! What the fuck kind of house is that? The movie just doesn’t even try to make sense. Women trying to bond over being older and they rent this $2500 a night house in Napa Valley that comes with a paella guy that drives a limo? Yeah, that’s a premise I can identify with. This is clearly a movie that speaks to me as a woman. I’m here to be with my girls on a trip for my 50th birthday, what the hell is this paella guy doing here and why is he fondling a giant calamari like its somebody’s afterbirth? Some kind of weird symbolism.

The whole time I’m watching “Wine Country” I’m thinking, Who did they make this snorefest for? Of course, the answer is, Themselves. I don’t know what I was expecting. Well, I don’t know what Shizzy and Loqueesha were expecting, to be more accurate, because I never wanted to watch this crap in the first place. I wanted to watch that BeyoncĂ© thing, or that movie about Ted Bundy because serial killers are way more interesting and funnier than girl buddy movies. You know what would make a good movie! “Wine Country” women run into Ted Bundy in a Calistoga bar and only the Lesbian one makes it out! I’ll be calling you Netflix guy. That’s a surefire pitch.

16 comments:

Tim McNally said...

Could not agree more, Hose-y (hope you don't mind the familiar greeting) This movie was not more about wine or wine country than my backing out of my driveway is about the Indy 500. No, that action may be more closely associated with automobile racing than this movie was about wine. It's a terrible picture, made even worse by the promise the title holds out. You are right. Pohler got her trip to a place where grapevines live; brought along some cameras and no scripts along with a bunch of no-talent "friends." Next time, how about a movie about the Indy 500?

barkeater said...

omgosh......am SSOOO in love with Lo Hai Qu ! This was perfect with the cup of coffee I promptly spit out.

Unknown said...

Thank you, HoseMaster. I've been waiting a long time for the return of Lo Hai Qu. The Youth!
They will forever be amongst us.

Stephen Brook said...

Me too. Do you really think she's just Ron's intern? Just sayin.
Stephen Brook

Pam Strayer said...

Honestly I don't know why they released it. An embarrassment to all concerned. Now it's going to make the organic people as popular as Sideways made Merlot!

Maybe Netflix can hire YOU to write it next time!

Bill Ward said...

Craptastic! Sic her on the "Somm" movies!

Tom In Real Life said...

Well that's just great. I had zero interest in seeing this tribute to vanity but now I need to know just how truly bad it is. Your words, sorry... Lo Hai Qu's words paint a pretty bleak picture. But critics have been wrong before (I'm talking to you James Laube) so I need to see it for myself. Hell, it just might be the feel-good romp I need to lift my spirits.

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Hey Gang,
It was my gorgeous wife's idea to have Lo Hai Qu review "Wine Country." I haven't done her voice for quite a while, so it was a challenge to capture it again. Honestly, I don't think I quite did.

"Wine Country" fails on every level. So it goes. Comedy is very very very hard to do, and the premise for this film was its biggest burden. They had no idea what to do with it, so they fell back on tired old comedy tropes.

I also disliked "Sideways." I haven't watched it in decades, but I'm sure it doesn't hold up. I'd never write a comedy about wine, Pam, it's a flat comic subject for film. When I was in the comedy biz, everyone, and I mean everyone, would say to me, "You should write a sitcom about working in _______." fill in the blank with whatever they did for a living. "About working in a bank," "About working as a valet," "About selling children into the sex trade." "It's hilarious," they'd all say. Nope, it's really not.

Wine business is no different.

Richard Heilman said...

This movie was so painful to watch it was worse than trying to drink natural wine. Seriously, I had to go guzzle a bottle of Champagne with a Grand Cru Burgundy chaser just to get the thought of the movie out of my head. Besides the hurt almost all of these women put on my eyes, Ron, you nailed it when you said it fails on so many levels and so glad to read Lo Hai Qu's review.

Legless in Burgundy said...

I confess I watched this one hour twenty seven minutes of painful drivel; or rather, I was so numbed by its pointless, talentless, rudderless uselessness I couldn't be bothered to hit stop.

Like that bottle of Ganevat "Vins d'Ailleurs Blanc", a minute in I was wondeering how something could be so poor, and why its production was so clearly incomplete. On this evidence, even I could write a better script.

It's almost a shock that Lo Hai Qu felt it worth commenting on; but Lo Hai Qu does as Lo Hai Qu is.

And I am glad she is back.

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Legless,
I've been looking for an excuse to bring back Lo Hai Qu, so when my wife suggested she review "Wine Country," it all came together. I didn't think the film worth reviewing necessarily, I still don't, but when I read a few painfully stupid reviews on wine sites, I thought I'd jump in.

Lots of folks seem glad to see Lo back. I'm surprised, really. But grateful.

Unknown said...

I was a tad bit trashed and started to watch the movie, after 15 minutes I shut it off. Wife was surprised I watched it for 15 minutes.

Marcia Macomber said...

Fave line: "This movie didn’t need a director, it needed fucking Jack Kevorkian." LOVE hearing from Lo Hai Qu! Did NOT love this movie. But loved how LHQ reviewed it! Methinks it had a different name in production and the marketing dept. at Netflix renamed it just to get eyeballs on it.

Now how about LHQ taking on the Batonnage Forum's "Sex Sells" discussion? We all know LHQ and Shizzangela would prefer wine sold with short skirts...

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Marcia Love,
I'm always a bit amazed by how much people like Lo Hai Qu. The "Sex Sells" discussion at Batonnage would require me actually listening to it before I wrote about it, and I don't think I can. Is there anyone in the wine business who gives good panel?

Lo and Shizzangela use sex as a weapon, or perhaps more of a warning shot across the crotch. I know Lo pretty well. She is scarily real to me, and her voice is crystal clear in my head when I write. I have no idea why she inhabits me, but she does. She's a straight shooter, profane and rough around the edges, but she's a very moral being. She hates the misogyny and hypocrisy of the wine biz and is unafraid to say so in her own crazy way. In a way, she's the offspring of the HoseMaster and Samantha, God forbid, yet somehow, because of the original name I gave her, she's Chinese. She's filtered through the HoseMaster voice, so she often speaks in anachronisms, references a 25-year-old woman would never use. That's part of the point for me. It gives the pieces an edge I like. When she possesses me, I have enormous fun. She's a very freeing character to write.

Lo had vanished from my head for months and months. My wife's suggestion to use her to review "Wine Country" brought her back in a rush. Yet I still have no idea when she'll reappear. She tells me, not the other way around.

Paul Wagner said...

Wait! Wine Country isn't really about Wine Country? Damn....next you're going to tell me that Chinatown isn't about Grant Street...

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Paul,
And "Fargo" isn't about credit card scams either.