Cocktail

Name: Cocktail
Released: 1988-7-29
Cast: Tom Cruise, Bryan Brown, Elisabeth Shue, Lisa Banes, Laurence Luckinbill

Cocktail

R
1h 43m
1988

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Tom Cruise is electrifying as Brian Flanagan, a young, confident, and ambitious bartender who, with the help of a seasoned pro (Bryan Brown), becomes the toast of Manhattan's Upper East Side. But when he moves to Jamaica and meets an independent artist (Elisabeth Shue), their vivid romance brings a new perspective to the self-centered bartender's life.

Director:

Roger Donaldson

Producer:

Ted Field, Robert Cort

Writer:

Heywood Gould

Cast:

Tom Cruise, Bryan Brown, Elisabeth Shue, Lisa Banes, Laurence Luckinbill, Kelly Lynch

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

TOMATOMETER®

Critics Consensus: There are no surprises in Cocktail, a shallow, dramatically inert romance that squanders Tom Cruise's talents in what amounts to a naive barkeep's banal fantasy.

Reviews

El Nuevo Herald (Miami)

Rene Jordan

Cruise was never been a bad actor, but this film about a flaming sex symbol has elevated him to definitive stardom. [Full review in Spanish]

Cocktail kicks off with an entertainingly lighthearted opening stretch revolving around Brian's initial entry into the world of bartending...

Cocktail is a vacuous throwback to Saturday Night Fever -- without the cultural novelty. The script is spiked with some comic lines, but overproof doses of inadvertent humor kill the effect.

As if realizing that his star hasn't smiled for 15 minutes, Donaldson tacks on a goody-goody ending that would shame the Care Bears. How to sum up what went wrong? Cruise has a line in the movie: "Flat beer from rusty pipes."

Ultimately, the ideas in this film fall as flat as stale beer and honest emotions are as watered down as cheap whiskey. This Cocktail is definitely on the rocks.

February 26, 2019

FULL REVIEW