Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Diana Penty, Boman Irani, Dimple Kapadia
Director: Homi Adjania
Rating: 2.5/5
Cocktail is lavishly predictable!
When the budget is big, the locations grand, the cast exciting and great to look at, a movie already has everything going for it. Coupled with lovely music and even lovelier costumes any movie is a completely attractive package.
But Cocktail is a beer gone flat!
It seems to be nothing more than a jazzier version of Mujhse Dosti Karoge, trying hard to show what an Awesome desi Threesome is all about! Well! It’s a story that backfires and leaves you only interested in your cheese popcorn.
Homi Adajania's brightly glossy Cocktail seems unburdened by any ‘wow’ cinematic ambition beyond looking very glamorous - an aim it meets with highly attractive leads and rather excellent art direction and to the audience that is super cool! If this were an American film, it'd star Katherine Heigl or Jennifer Aniston, perhaps both opposite a dashing Channing Tatum or Chris Pine.
Adajania starts off breezily enough. All his fast paced cuts of disco lights, booze and skimpily clad women sounds like a dream to the viewer. The effortless flirting and shot glasses followed by dramatically teary mascara, makes this movie a typical love story, a rom-com of sorts. A major, cliché!
The lack of sub-plots, and sensitization of ‘bahut zyaada’ sadness ruins the script itself. The last one-third of the film features the kind of emotional kich-kich that can only be rightfully resolved by handing one of the girls a butcher’s knife or in a simpler way – giving them a brain. Alas, no such fortune is offered and you are left wondering was that entire last one hour of the movie really, really necessary.
While Deepika and Saif are naturally charming on screen, Diana Penty makes it to ‘bad acting girl’ Numero 2, the best of course being the irreplaceable Nargis Fakhri of Rockstar at Number One!
She is a pretty face with an eyebrow raised up for every dialogue she narrates. She plays the so called ‘pure’ Indian girl, who falls for the ‘Bad Delhi munda’
So far so basic, yet aspects of the film are jarring right from the start. Saif is visibly at his best as the roguish charmer, adopting an exaggeratedly over-the-top approach to flirting that comes across as plain obnoxious.
And no one in either city will deny, that Saif can play a Bombay Boy any day, but even an Ayushmann Khurana plays a Delhiwala better that Saif!
He's never awful, as such, just out of place and trying hard to look young, fitting into an ‘The Who’ tee when it’s clearly a mis-match.
The ladies are a great deal grander, the dazzling Diana refreshingly natural as the simple girl, her beauty doing the acting for her and a smoldering Deepika with her smoky eye-makeup, cleavage- flaunting outfits, stunningly sexy legs and grab-able body making even the most sophisticated audiences hoot and whistle.
All three genuinely look like they're having a good time, this chemistry cum camaraderie making for a reasonably enjoyable first half, with an upbeat, sexy vibe even if several characters don't seem to belong to this film.
The music is a crowd puller, with Pritam doing a fantastic job. The use of Coke Studio’s ‘Jugni Ji’ couldn’t have come at a better time in the film as the perfect background score.
But that’s the flaw about ‘Cocktail,’ despite everything going for it, it remotely succeeds in pleasing the audience.
The Indian audience loves Imtiaz Ali, but they have also reached a statutory peak, where they want to see the glam-sham couple Saif and Padukone lip lock on screen together! They don’t just want any happy ending; they want the happy ending that enthralls them the most.
Cocktail has an impressive beginning. With beautiful cast establishing sequences, fast paced music and a lavish feel. But, Imtiaz and Sajid Ali are solely to blame for the epic collapse the movie is in its second half.
The supporting cast comprising of Boman Irani and Dimple Kapadia make the film entertaining. They are also the characters with the best dialogues “Mera Menopause chaalu hain” that add a punch of much –needed humour to the film.
Randeep Hooda is a 'come in - go out' character, who is pointless even though he delivers his best in his 10 minutes of fame.
It's a pity Cocktail has a bad script. The Bollywood masala-filled industry desperately wanted their favourite stars on screen to tell them a new story and tickle their insides. Cocktail could have definitely been a fresh, out of the box, threesome – unconventional and novel. I wouldn’t deny that Cocktail does leave the audience with a handful of genuine ‘spary’ and ‘vibrant’ moments, but the film finally crashes and burns so spectacularly that it's hard to focus on the positives. The second half is a major low, especially for the genius who has created romantic comedies as desi as the super-favourite Jab We Met.
For everything that’s sizzling about this film, we definitely owe it to the art and costume directors, and of course a gorgeously, no-miss, Deepika Padukone.