Metacritic reviews

Hysterically funny yet melancholy comedy.

In Sideways, Payne has created four of the most lived-in, indelible characters in recent American movies. This deliciously bittersweet movie makes magic out of the quotidian.

Sweetest, funniest, most humane movie I've seen all year.

It's an intoxicating feeling when a movie excites and enlivens us like this -- and there's a particular giddiness to be had in thinking about what movies can (but don't often) do for one's soul after imbibing such a fine vintage.

A beautifully observed, small-scale study of personal foibles, romantic uncertainty and two sides of the sadly predictable male animal.

In this role Giamatti gives his bravest, most generously humane performance yet. Women may be repelled, but men will know this man, because, at one time or another, many of us have been this man.

Like the film itself, the performance (Giamatti's) is deeply controlled, played with restraint and with microscopic attention to detail.

Good comedies are rare, but rarer still are those that conflate laughter with intimacy.

Jack and Miles are male archetypes, as well as the two most fully realized comic creations in recent American movies.

Alexander Payne's new movie, Sideways, makes you feel like you're trapped at dinner with a wiseass who's trying to convince you what a sensitive guy he is.