10 'Comedies' That Were Secretly Really Depressing

6. Sideways

You can take just one pick of the topics prevalent in Sideways - loneliness, divorce, artistic failure, the process of ageing into irrelevance - and find that a mere one of those is enough to thoroughly bum you out. All of those together in one film does not a feelgood comedy make. Yes, Alexander Payne's greatest film to date is full of witty observations and the occasional laugh-out-loud line, but that doesn't Sideways isn't also one of the harsher comedies out there. Two old friends - one of them an actor whose best days are behind him, the other a washed-up would-be writer whose book just got rejected again - lapsing into middle-age, but taking a road trip in an attempt to forget that for a few days, was always destined to be a downer of a story. One of the most enduring images from the film is Miles (Paul Giamatti) drinking wine alone at a burger joint, having just left his ex-wife's wedding where she's just married a new partner. After that, Payne offers up an ambiguous ending, suggesting Miles' romantic interest, Maya (Virginia Madsen), may be looking to partner up. Judging how everything else before it has gone, though, it's probably unlikely that there's going to be any happiness in store for Miles.