Movie Review: Cocktail
Rating: 
Review:
Before we begin with the review, if you think that our rating scale isn’t showing the rating stars, you are mistaken, we have given it 0, if that also doesn’t make it clear, let us spell it out for you – ZERO!
Okay so let’s begin our review like we always have – by telling you the story or the summary of the movie but sadly enough, there isn’t a story to talk of! Not one that is worth talking of anyway. Still, being a ‘good’ reviewer or a critic we will try giving you what Cocktail is all about (other than being utter non sense of course).
Cocktail follows the tried and tested and now stale formula of a love triangle. Gautam (Saif Ali Khan) is a compulsive flirt, an ‘old’ looking compulsive flirt who gets in a no strings attached relationship with Veronica (Deepika Padukone), a rich spoilt brat who parties all night and sleeps all day. Seems to be a perfect match doesn’t it? Then there is Meera (Diana Penty), a girl next door who hates Gautam for the way he is i.e. a flirt and somehow the three of them end up being the best of friends, how? We too aren’t sure about that! Enters Gautam’s mother (Dimple Kapadia). Meera is the girl Gautam takes home to his mother (Dimple Kapadia) to cover-up his live-in with Veronica but then by the interval, his heart actually skips a beat for Meera and everything else is history.
Phew, it took us twenty three minutes to come up with a 140 word story of Cocktail. Movies that lack a story tend to make our job pretty tough!
Finally, coming to the movie, we haven’t seen a movie in recent times that has opened at such a slow pace as Cocktail. Fine, there have been movies that tend to begin at a slow note, when the story is settling in but over here, the pace is slow, slow, slow and slow!
The first half of the movie, as has already been emphasized was slower than a tortoise’s walking speed! We went into the theatre took our comfortable seats and waited for something to happen and sadly enough, even though a lot of things happened, nothing really impressed us or aroused or sense of interest towards the movie. This is where we tell you that our interpretation of the first half might not be cent % correct for there came a time somewhere in the first half where I dozed off for ten odd minutes. We aren’t sure if anything drastic happened during those ten minutes but well, dozing off certainly explains how good the first half actually was. It isn’t about the bad acting or poor on screen performance but it’s about just not being able to connect with the movie on any level! The weakest link in the first half if not the entire movie is the friendship between Diana Penty and Deepika. They went from being complete strangers to staying in the same house and being the best of friends in matter of 120 seconds. That is something very hard to digest to say the least. It seemed as if the director was in a hurry or rather wanted to give the movie some pace but it certainly didn’t give the movie any sort of pace. All it did was added another point in the long list of cons Cocktail has. The best scenes or rather the funny scenes or the only interesting scenes in the first half of the movie are where Boman Irani (Gautam’s mamu) is seen and sadly enough those too aren’t enough to make the movie interesting. This is where we remind you of the ten minutes that we skipped because of dozing off in the theatre! Never before ever did we so eagerly waited for the interval to arrive in a movie. The blunt truth – movies like Cocktail make the advertisements interesting and worth waiting for! That Vicco advertisement never before brought such sense of excitement in us!
The second half of the movie is again slow! If one has to think of a positive in the second half and trust us it is really hard to think of one, it has to be the establishment of the love triangle and the three of them knowing who loves who! Another thing that we did observe in the movie was the eye blinding effects that were given to the scenes at the club. We saw the eye blinding effect thrice and it certainly was eye blinding. The only sane conclusion that we could make of the effect was that the director wanted us to give our eyes a rest and prevent us from watching what utter non sense of a movie he has made!
Coming to the acting bit, Saif Ali Khan is a descent enough actor but then he does looks older than the two girls and if one would ask us, it is about time for him to quit doing love triangles, I mean seriously, he surely has tried his level best or at least his makeup artist has to make him fit right in but he certainly looks a little old. Deepika Padukone’s performance as far as her acting goes is certainly good and there are enough scenes where she has been used as ‘show piece’ showing off her body time and again but fairly enough her character suits her well even though there were a couple of scenes in which she looked as horrible as she could have. As for the debutant, Diana Penty, being a girl next door, her acting does come across as natural but she certainly lacks expressions, noticeable expressions at certain scenes. One can expect that to get better if she does do movies in the future that is.
The camera work and the screen play are good though. There are certain easily flowing dialogues that are interesting to hear and have a certain sense of wit to them but they are scarce and by the time they arrive you already are snatching your hair and cursing yourself for going in to watch such a slow flick. Fine the story might be realistic, fine this certainly would be someone’s story somewhere completely believable but movies are supposed to be a mode of entertainment not a means of giving you a head ache and causing irritation and that’s what exactly this movie gave us- a head ache and enormous amount of irritation waiting for it to end!
All in all (if it isn’t already clear) Cocktail failed to impress us completely. If we are to compare this with Teri Meri Kahaani, the other ‘blockbuster’ (obvious sarcasm) that we saw a couple of weeks ago, we would rate Teri Meri Kahaani on the same level. In the two hours something there were about seven minutes that impressed us or are worth watching and the best part, we already saw four minutes of these seven in the trailers while the rest three aren’t as exciting for you to burn a hole in your pocket for going to the theatre to watch Cocktail. A special mention to the song ‘Jugni’ for sure. That song certainly gave us Goosebumps. We give Cocktail 0.1 on 5 from us at OP. Never in a movie did we so eagerly wait for the exit door to open! This Cocktail might not give you a kick but it certainly will give you a hangover head ache for sure!
Vidit is the founder of Observer's Paradise. He has keen interest in sports, music, books and is a tech nerd hence the categories that you see on the site. Apart from being a blogger, he loves to write poetry and has authored a book by the name 'The Fanatic Four'. He is currently working on a couple of other projects as well. 
