Cocktail (1988)

Directed by Roger Donaldson. Starring Tom Cruise, Bryan Brown, Elisabeth Shue, Lisa Banes, Gina Gershon, Kelly Lynch, Laurence Luckinbill, Ron Dean. [R]

Early in Cocktail, Tom Cruise goes looking for a job in the big city and gets turned down, one after another, for a lack of education, experience, etc. He should’ve just applied to star in this movie, ‘cause it couldn’t be more tailor-made for Cruise if they changed his character’s name to Cole Trickle or Jerry Maguire. Trouble is, the character’s not there, just a run-of-the-mill cocky yuppie burning the candle at both ends while attending college classes by day and serving drinks at a trendy Upper East Side bar by night, harboring ambitions to open his own joint with mentor Brown. Naïve as he is, and struggle as he may to see that dream come true, he still gets to live the male fantasy lifestyle with every woman onscreen throwing themselves at him at some point. He’s gotta go through his share of bad girls and sugar mamas before he meets Miss Right (Shue), but alas… We’re meant to lap up the phony ambience and showy “flair bartending”, but Tom is supposed to be holding the center, and not only is he uninteresting, but he’s the sort of grinning, pseudo-earnest creep who’d cheat on a nice girl to win a bet, which might work in a character study, but not one where we’re supposed to root for the guaranteed happy ending. A self-aware jerk is still a jerk, and the world he inhabits is just as shallow, empty and counterfeit as he is. Gave the world the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo”, too, so take that to heart however you like (guilty pleasure, atrocity, something in between, etc.). Screenwriter Heywood Gould also wrote the same-named book upon which the story is based.

33/100