Cocktail (2012) - Drama

WOW – what a disaster! Some movies actually turn out to be – how you expect them to be. This was one of those movies that I predicted long back that it won’t be any good – no matter who makes it and what’s the story all about. I will remember this for – what a great fall for a guy like Homi Adjania (Director) from “Being Cyrus” to “Cocktail”. He actually carried so many people from his last movie still this wasn’t a quarter as good as that one. Anyways, what confused me further was – what was the point of making this movie – obviously other than making a movie for money and breaking off the image of “Offbeat Movie Maker” to a “Commercial Movie Maker”, as he will be called now once Cocktail crosses at least a 100 crore mark. This wasn’t entertaining, was this comedy? No, cause I laughed like only thrice, movie with a message? No, I didn’t get any, serious stuff? No, Movie with a difference? Yes, indeed it has a different ending, better than your imagination for sure. Will I watch it again? No Ways. Would I recommend it to anyone? Yeah, the DVD will be out shortly, check it out then.

The Movie: As I said earlier – I had no expectations from this one hence I wasn't shocked with the outcome and those 150 minutes didn't bother me. Saif actually needs a good Director to extract best out of him, no doubt he is a good and proven actor but here in this movie – you actually see an over the top over confident Saif with the corniest lines ever heard in a movie. Movie starts with Meera (Diana Penty) landing in London to unite with her estranged husband Kunal (Randeep Hooda). As expected Kunal throws her out of his life but promises her a Citizenship in lieu of their marriage and money he got from her to come to London. Cut to scene two – we see a carefree Veronica (Deepika) walking in to a grocery store, drunk and needs to use the wash room, guess what Meera is already in the washroom – crying hence Veronica being an India – helps her and takes her home. They come across Gautam (Saif) in a restaurant just like that. Meera had already met Gautam at airport where he tried to woo her with his corny lines before she walks out on him. Hence Veronica takes a revenge on him by throwing the same lines on him in the restaurant in front of his clients. This scene was supposed to be hilarious but I couldn't even smile – let alone a hearty laugh. They meet again in a pub and become friends, so much so that he moves in with them to stay at Veronica’s place. Veronica is a rich spoilt girl with careless parents and oh yeah – she has a SLR so guess she works and makes enough money to frequent pubs in London every night, as if I care. Gautam is a Software Engineer who maintains a 3 day old beard all the time and Meera conveniently gets a job as a Graphic Designer in no time. 

Gautam has a family and a maternal uncle right there in London with a mom somewhere in Punjab who keeps sending him pictures of his future wife. This uncle happens to be Boman Irani in a thankless and pointless role. Although he is the one who is responsible for some fun in the movie after all. His mom is none other than Dimple Kapadia who does gives them a surprise visit – only to find her son having a ball with two girls around – so she picks up one of them as his future wife who wears salwar kameez and looks like the one – who would make a perfect Indian wife. As they do in all the movies – they play a couple as long as mom is around and end up falling for each other. By the time mom goes back they are already in love with a third angle that even Veronica realizes – she too loves Gautam and cant be left out. So she changes gears and becomes all goody two shoes like Meera (At least she tries). Now the big question – who gets Gautam in the end? That’s what you need to see movie for guys. Go ahead waste your hard earned money in a not so funny movie – waste your 150 precious minutes too to know the ending or rather I would say, Google it and wiki has the full story with the ending written too.

What’s my problem: The promo’s and posters tell us a different story altogether – we hoped that it would be a great entertainer at least a good time pass for sure with those cute faces. The thing I did not like was – it had nothing to offer that we haven’t already seen in our movies. Almost no entertainment – if your definition of entertainment is an aged looking guy trying to look chick n hot with those one liners. Deepika is now being typecast in almost same roles in all her movies – she is almost wearing the same cloths too I guess. She doesn’t even look one bit different than how she was in her earlier movies – for a moment we thought she straight walked out of the Item number from movie “Dum Maaro Dum” to this movie set – was drunk too I guess. Boman and Dimple are wasted in such a crappy movie – I guess the Director just wanted to buy some more footage to lengthen the movie to make it two and a half hour long hence the additional characters in thankless roles. Randeep Hooda had hardly anything to do but whatever he did – his screen presence was a kind of relief to me as his character wasn’t a cliché but a normal guy in bad situation. Songs – the less said the better. Cinematography – how many times do we need to see those same locations again and again and again. Actually every 15 minutes spent on the movie – you feel like – what the heck am I watching? And then you tell yourself “Cocktail” cause when everything is added in one drink – that’s what you get. It was actually reminding me of the title every now and then – just like that. If you have seen it or plan to see it – do let me know how you like it.