An edited and revised film review by Roger Ebert on July 29, 1988.
Cocktail tells the story of
two bartenders and their adventures in six bars and several bedrooms. What is
remarkable, given the subject, is how little the movie knows about bars or
drinking.
Early
in the film, there's a scene where the two bartenders stage an elaborately
choreographed act behind the bar. They juggle bottles in unison, one spins ice
cubes into the air and the other one catches them, and then they flip bottles
at each other like a couple of circus jugglers. All of this is done to rock 'n'
roll music, and it takes them about four minutes to make two drinks. They get a
roaring ovation from the customers in their crowded bar, which is a tip-off to
the movie's glossy phoniness. This isn't bartending, it's a music video, and
real drinkers wouldn't applaud, they'd shout: Shut up and pour! The bartenders in the film are Brian Flanagan, played
by Tom Cruise, a young ex-serviceman
who dreams of becoming a millionaire, and Doug Coughlin, played by Bryan Brown, a hard-bitten veteran who
has lots of cynical advice. Doug advises Brian to keep his eyes open for a rich chick, because that's his ticket to
someday opening his own bar. Brian is ready for this advice.
He
studies self-help books and believes that he'll be rich someday, if only he
gets that big break. The movie is supposed to be about how he outgrows his
materialism, although the closing scenes leave room for enormous doubts about
his redemption.
The
first part of the movie works the best. That's when Brian drops out of school,
becomes a full-time bartender, makes Doug his best friend and learns to juggle
those bottles. In the real world, Brian and Doug would be fired for their
time-wasting grandstanding behind the bar, but in this movie they get hired to
work in a fancy disco where they have a fight over a girl named Coral (Gina Gershon) and Brian heads for
Jamaica.
There,
as elsewhere, his twinkling eyes and friendly smile seem irresistible to the
women on the other side of the bar, and he lives in a world of one-night
stands. That's made possible by the fact that no one in this movie has ever
heard of AIDS, not even Bonnie, (Lisa
Banes) a rich female fashion executive who picks Brian up and takes him
back to Manhattan with her.
What
do you think? Do you believe a millionaire Manhattan woman executive in her late
30s would sleep with a wildly promiscuous bartender in his 20s she’s picked up in
a resort on Jamaica? Not unless she was seriously drunk. And that's another
area this movie knows little about: the actual effects of drinking. Sure, Brian
gets tanked a couple of times and staggers around a little and throws a few
punches. But given the premise that he and Doug drink all of the time,
shouldn't they be drunk, or hung over, at least most of the time? Not in this
fantasy world.
If
the film had stuck to the relationship between Brian and Doug, it might have
had a chance. It makes a crucial error when it introduces a love story,
involving Brian and Jordan Mooney (Elisabeth
Shue), a vacationing waitress from New York. They find true love, which is
shattered when Jordan sees Brian with Bonnie late one night.
After
Bonnie takes Brian back to New York and tries to turn him into her boy toy, he
realizes his mistake and apologizes to Jordan, only to discover, of course,
that she is pregnant - and rich.
The
last stages of the movie were written, directed and acted on autopilot,
as Jordan’s millionaire daddy tries to throw Brian out of the penthouse. But
love triumphs! There is not a moment in the movie's last half-hour that is not
borrowed from other movies, and eventually even the talented and graceful Cruise
can be seen laboring with the ungainly reversals in the script. Shue, who does
whatever is possible with her role, is handicapped because her character is
denied the freedom to make natural choices; at every moment, her actions are
dictated by the artificial demands of the plot.
It's
a shame the filmmakers didn't take a longer, harder look at this material. The
movie's most interesting character is the older bartender, superbly played by Bryan
Brown, who never has a false moment. If the film had been told from his point
of view, it would have been a lot more interesting, but box-office
considerations no doubt required the center of gravity to shift to Tom Cruise
and Elisabeth Shue.
One
of the weirdest things about Cocktail
is the so-called message it thinks it contains. Brian is painted throughout the
film as a cynical, success-oriented 1980s materialist who wants only to meet a
rich woman and own his own bar. That's why Jordan doesn't tell him at first
that she's rich. Toward the end of the movie, there's a scene where he
allegedly chooses love over money, but then, a few months later, he is the
owner and operator of his own slick Manhattan singles bar.
How
did he finance it? There's a throwaway line about how he got some money from
his uncle, a subsistence-level bartender who can't even afford a late-model
car. Sure. It costs a fortune to open a slick singles bar in Manhattan, and so
we are left with the assumption that Brian's rich father-in-law came through
with the financing. If the movie didn't want to leave that impression, it
shouldn't have ended with the scene in the bar. But then this is the kind of
movie that uses Brian's materialism as a target all through the story and then
rewards him for it at the end. The more you think about what really happens in Cocktail, the more you realize how empty
and fabricated it really is. [Ebert’s rating: ** out of 4 stars]
Labels:
comedy, drama, romance
Blu-ray "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys with scenes from "Cocktail"
