COCKTAIL 1988
5%
Directed by Roger Donaldson
Written by Heywood Gould
Starring Tom Cruise, Elisabeth Shue, Bryan Brown, Kelly Lynch
Synopsis
In this romantic drama, a hotshot flair bartender meets the woman of his dreams but must contend with both her wealthy family and his own competitiveness to keep it all from falling apart.
Why We Love It
Cocktail may have an outdated storyline in which women are objects and prizes to be won, but if anything can transcend the trashiness of the script, it’s the charisma and easy, relaxed chemistry between Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue. Secondarily, what really stands the test of time—and what altered the drinking habits of Americans across the country—were the numerous thrilling scenes of Cruise flipping, tipping, and tossing liquor bottles in intricately choreographed flair routines that became so popular, people flocked to a chain restaurant called T.G.I. Friday’s to see the real flair bartenders in action. (The restaurant’s founder, Alan Stillman, claims to have been the inspiration for Cruise’s character Brian, though writer Heywood Gould based it on his own life.)
Gould’s original script played more like an anti-Wall Street drama containing layers and depth about the meaning of money, class, and age—and if you squint, you can still see a little of that in the film. But Disney chose to soft-sell that aspect, sensing the country’s Reagan-era hunger for wealth and power was on the way out the door but not quite dead yet. By nixing the sociopolitical elements, director Roger Donaldson allowed for more time spent behind the bar, watching Cruise and Bryan Brown’s Doug Coughlin perform their own routines to cross-generational party songs like “Hippy Hippy Shake.”
Writing for the LA Times, Sheila Benson said, “The pairing of old-hand Brown and young-hand Cruise may have been meant to remind us of Cruise and Paul Newman; if so, think of this as ‘The Color of Counterfeit Money.’” What the partnership—and the movie—lacked, according to Benson, was a moral compass, noting that early press screenings had people “hiss[ing] and hoot[ing]” at Cruise’s character Flanagan’s more vacuous decisions (of which there are plenty). But even Benson conceded that if there were a draw for Cocktail, it was Cruise’s “twinkling, twinkling, twinkling” self, as he flipped bottles behind the bar.
According to Cruise, to prepare for the role, he interviewed thirty-five bartenders to get the tools of the trade and only broke five bottles in the process. He’d already shown in Top Gun that he’d be willing to immerse himself in his character so much as to attain a license to fly. Cocktail may just be a romantic drama, but it’s also the foundation for Cruise’s subsequent career of physically demanding roles and deep research, which would lead him to perform all of his own spectacular stunts in the Mission Impossible films.