Monday, July 30, 2012

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


6 comments:

  1. wow that is one rocking review! great read!!!

    and i can't believe the kuch kuch hota hai nonsense is still expected to work! When will bollywood go back to having real women in their movies?

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    1. Thanks Keets! Well Bollywood does not think a commercial film can sell without hypocrisy 'a la Indian values' in it.Films like Dev-D are the exception.But Bollywood is definitely better than Kollywood to some extent in this particular aspect.Atleast we don't have a hero advising her on 'indian culture' :P
      Deepika is smoking hot in this movie,and her costumes are particularly spectacular.You should see it for the dresses she wears :)

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    2. i read the review Sudha posted too. And i cant believe ppl actually told me Cocktail is a "hip and modern" movie. bullshit! Vivah - that sloppy Rajshree Prod. movie was far less fake!

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  2. Wonderful review! :) Reading a real good one after a long time! super cool, write more......

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    1. Thanks Vas! I just got the mood to blog again after watching the movie.I will definitely blog more frequently now.

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  3. Nice review! I read another review of this movie that that said pretty much the same thing. Its quite regressive and not worth spending 100 bucks :)

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