Uncorked Review

There is nothing new about making films involving wine. Between feature films and documentaries, wine is very well covered in Hollywood. But a black film involving the study of wine? In Memphis?! Uncharted territory…until now. Uncorked is the story of Elijah (Mamadou Athie) and his pursuit of a Master Sommelier certification. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, the problem for Elijah this pursuit goes against the wishes of his father (Courtney B. Vance), who decided Elijah will help him and Elijah’s mom (Niecy Nash) run the family BBQ restaurant. While it’s not a story you see everyday, will Uncorked, to paraphrase Dave Chappelle's “(I Wanna) Piss on You” remix, have you sipping on Cris or will you be drinking piss? Hope there’s a third choice because Cristal isn’t an option.

From an acting standpoint, Uncorked is best described as strength in duos. The film is strongest when any combination of Athie, Vance, and Nash are on the screen in tandem. Athie’s ability to display the unrefined qualities of a twenty something finding himself combined with the authoritarian rigidness brought by Vance creates a tension felt from beginning to end. Nash’s scenes with Athie provide a nice counter to that tension with a soft but not overly sentimental approach to protecting her son’s dreams in spite of his flaws and simultaneously highlighting the error of Louis’s ways.

The best tandem is Vance and Nash and they do their best work in the scenes that focus on Louis and Sylvia’s relationship. Departing from Uncorked’s overall heavy narrative, the couple’s banter about topics ranging from Sylvia’s wigs to showing a little too much skin to closing the shop to go to the local all you can eat crab night are the funnest parts of the movie. It also gives us the most genuine relationship in the film. Their chemistry appears so natural that it feels like most of their lines were ad-libbed.

However, the Vance and Nash duo also reveals the film’s missed opportunities with its cast and that starts with Nash being criminally underutilized. She was easily the most dynamic performer in Uncorked and would have served the film well with more screen time. While Athie and Vance are solid in their respective roles, their performances feel restrained and never progress to a point of pulling the heartstrings. Also, the chemistry felt among the Athie-Vance-Nash trio does not extend to the rest of the cast. This makes scenes that do not feature the aforementioned tandems lull and awkward.

Uncorked is more flawed behind the camera. Writer-director Prentice Penny is far from bad in his feature film debut. His decision regarding the film’s subject matter and setting should be applauded for its uniqueness, which sets the table for a story rich with conflicts related to race, class, and father-son relationships. Sadly, Penny plays it too safe both in the script and the director’s chair on all the aforementioned themes. Despite having the acting talent available to expound on those themes, Penny’s script mutes them and pretty much removed most of the conflict from a film centered around a conflict. Even the film’s central conflict, Elijah’s sommelier dreams vs. Louis’s plans, is stripped of any real moments of conflict beyond a few less than encouraging words from Louis and his voice probably wasn’t raised when he said them. It feels more like a staring contest than actual conflict.

Uncorked has all the ingredients for a good movie, but a unique story and talented cast were not enough to overcome the script’s and director’s overly cautious approach to bringing it to life. There are worse options out there considering there are no theatrical release alternatives, but leave this one on the virtual shelf if you have better things to watch and/or do.