Cocktail and all it's fizz

Themes: love triangle,bad girl,good girl,modern woman

Positives:Deepika as Veronika and the songs

Negatives:Indian stereotypes trying to pass itself off as cool and modern

My Rating: 2/5

I recently tagged along with a friend to watch the much 'hyped' Bollywood 'Cocktail'. The awesome threesome in this movie consists of Veronika(note the Christian sounding name)- the bad girl,Meera-the good girl and Gautam- the irrepressible flirt who is the love interest of both the girls. Remember Kuch Kuch Hota Hai ...where Anjali the tomboy had to turn into a sari-clad  bharitya nari  to catch the eye of her best friend Rahul? Well,don't worry...the same stereotypes still continue to be present rampantly in this movie.

Veronika is the all time party girl who rescues Meera,the shy newlywed stranded in Australia after her husband dumps her. Gautam  and Veronika end up in a casual relationship,with Veronika falling for him.Problem is that Gautam ends up falling for Meera,seeing her all round 'indianess'.She ends up falling for him too for no good reason.
Deepika Padukone has given her best performance till date as Veronika,with all the sass and wild eyed look that  you'd expect to see in an all round wild child.Impressive,considering how plastic she's been in all her movies till date.Just as I was about to dismiss her as another plastic Ash in the making,she shows indications of possible acting skills.Saif Ali Khan  has his moments as Gautam,but is a bit 'over-cute' in his attempts to be the charming flirt.Diane Penty(I feel like going easy on her .Poor gal.Just imagine the nicknames she must have endured as  a kid with that name :p) is beautiful and does her best in the boring good girl role.The thing is there's not much in the movie to make you believe why both these girls would fall for Gautham,who does nothing much beyond bed-hopping and mooching off his current girlfriend.The second half of the movie basically puts you through the ordeal of watching Gautam moon for Meera,and Veronika try to turn herself into Meera.It's like the film-makers decided ..see ..we got you bad  rich girl drinking and sleeping with different men.Now let's see her reform and discover 'Indian culture'. So basically Cocktail ..is actually just a Mocktail.For all it's fizz and hype,it's not got the guts to go all the way .

Signing off with links to some awesome reviews of Cocktail :
The Vigil Idiot Version and
Spot the Slut version