Cocktail (1988) Even if it stands as the most flimsy and easily disposable of the 1980's Tom Cruise vehicles, this movie serves as a near perfect summing up of 80's Hollywood and Cruise's rise to stardom.
It reeks of the kind of movies that came oozing out of studio pitch meetings......
After the triumph of the various mighty Spielberg and Lucas blockbusters, 80's cinema became all about making us feel good, no matter what the genre.....comedy, action, sci-fi .drama.....
Out the door and into oblivion went all the challenging, quirky little dramas with unhappy or unsettled climaxes that defined 1970's filmmaking.
In came movies like this one, where our lovable, sometimes impulsive Tom Terrific becomes a flashy, dazzlingly proficient bartender, whipping up screwdrivers and Margaritas faster then he broke the speed of sound in "Top Gun".
And we love him for it. Especially when he woos a sweet, hot babe (Elizabeth Shue), loses her and then wins her back. By the time the movie reaches its last few minutes, Tom's got his own bar, the adoration of all his customers and Elizabeth Shue sporting a pregnant belly swollen with his spawn-to-be.
That's the 80's in a nutshell for you, folks.....where every studio film was guaranteed to make you leave with a contented smile...
To be fair to movie audiences of that era, "Cocktail" wasn't swallowed whole by the crowds......it took a fair amount of ridicule at the time of its release, falling in between the far more heavyweight and substantial Cruise films "The Color Of Money" and "Rain Man". (and racking up a few of those derisive 'Razzie' nominations)
More intuitive moviegoers and critics saw right through it......a slapped together cash grab designed to keep the Cruise 'brand' in the public eye.......as if Cruise was saying to his fans, "...hey as long as I flash my toothy smile, smooch the girl and win the day, you'll watch me in anything!"
Which they did. And the Cruise moviemaking machine rolled on through the 90's and into the new millennium.........not even slowed down when we all found out about his creepy, sinister love affair with the equally creepy sinister cult of Scientology.
It's no surprise then, that he reigns now, as he did back in the "Cocktail" days not as an actor, but as a reliable brand, a bankable commodity. There's not much difference between 'Cocktail' and the 'Mission Impossible' stunt circuses, except for the 300 million dollar budgets involved.......they're all still machine-tooled crowd pleasers, the parts assembled on a conveyer belt.
We'll more than generously award 2 stars (**) for the simple reason that if you're planning a nostalgic 1980's movie night, you couldn't pick a better addition to it than this one. For both Cruise lovers and Cruise mockers, this one's got all the feels........belly up the bar.
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