Cocktail (1988)

Cocktail remains one of the most well-known Tom Cruise films, even if for the completely wrong reasons. Despite being a commercial success, it was lambasted by critics, earning it its spot as his lowest-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes to this day. With that much unanimous negative feedback, it feels silly to argue anything different; however, I do believe there is something of value to be found within it, even if it takes a bit of digging to get there.

Of course, it's a bad movie. The script is largely nonsense. It's riddled with decisions that defy any logical reasoning and heavy with a melodrama that exists largely separated from any kind of rewarding emotional arch. Again, Brian Flanagan is the same sort of character as Maverick and Vincent Lauria, another young, hot-shot with big dreams and little regard for others outside of his ambitions. His life lesson is clearer in Cocktail than it is in Top Gun, but the story jumps and twists in ways that makes the journey perplexing and the resolution forced. Maybe Brian learns to put aside his greed for the sake of love, but everything between the start in the end is a confused mess.

But that doesn't mean it's a miserable movie to watch, either. There's enough head-scratching elements that it's highly enjoyable to sit through, especially with a friend or two in the room with you. In all honesty, it's one of my favorite movies for that reason, just because it's so baffling in so many of its decisions. After watching it so many times, however, a sort of Cocktail-induced insanity sets in that sends you scrambling for answers.

Specifically, I find Cocktail interesting in the same way I find Risky Business interesting. Cocktail feels much less self-aware and lacks a compelling thesis, but still reflects strongly on the economic attitude that ensnared the 80s. There's very little attempt at any kind of critique of this outside of, "Brian's greed is ultimately a bad thing," but the failures of the film, in addition to some painfully obvious references to things like yuppie culture, do paint a broader picture of what it meant to be successful in the 80s and who had access to this form of success. Which, admittedly, is probably something only I'm very much intrigued by, which is only another factor in why I spend time writing tongue-in-cheek analyses of how Cocktail is really an analogy for internalized homophobia as awareness of the AIDS epidemic and its destruction was rapidly increasing. Perhaps I'll discuss this more in depth at a later time.

As far as Cruise's performance go, it's nothing to write home about. Then again, it's difficult to make any part of this script appear good given the sheer stupidity of some of the dialogue and circumstances that the characters get themselves into. The Razzies nominated Cruise for Worst Actor, but I believe this is somewhat unfair. In general, I believe that this movie receives too much lashing from critics and the general public alike. It's not a good film, sure, but after watching all of Cruise's movies, I can definitely reassure it's not his very worse (I believe that Losin' It has that title, but few people have seen it).

With all that in mind, Cocktail is a lot of silly over-dramatics, but it's also a brainless and fun way to spend 103 minutes. I enjoy it enough to be the proud owner of a Cocktail poster, thank you very much.

Rating: 2.5/5 - February 18, 2020