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]

| Jun 22, 2022

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

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 14, 2020

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.

| Mar 22, 2019

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."

| Feb 26, 2019

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.

| Feb 26, 2019

Cocktail is so steeped in corn, the drama seems comedic and the comedy is about as funny as a hangover.

| Dec 9, 2017

Cocktail is a bottle of rotgut in a Dom Perignon box.

| May 21, 2013

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.

| May 21, 2013

Perhaps the best one can say for this bland concoction mixed by agents and the studio executives is that every bartender in Hollywood wants to be Tom Cruise and that suffices as an ironic subtext.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 21, 2013

It may not be a megaton bomb, but Cocktail is definitely of the Molotov type.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 21, 2013

The philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote a book about the banality of evil. After seeing Cocktail, I want to write one about the evil of banality.

| Original Score: 1/4 | May 21, 2013

If they gave you this in a bar, you'd send it back.

| May 21, 2013

With no fewer than 17 of Donaldson's favorite rock songs and a complete lack of dramatic impetus, Cocktail would fare better as an extended-play music video.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 21, 2013

If some other drug were treated this way in a movie, lots of outraged people -- including parents and politicians -- would be up in arms. But it's only alcohol, the reasoning seems to go, so it's all harmless fun.

| May 21, 2013

Very, very stupid.

| May 21, 2013

Cruise oozes as much charm as in Top Gun and The Colour of Money, but the mix of bar-acrobatics and Caribbean love isn't anywhere near strong enough to get you drunk.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 21, 2013

Cruise is beguiling with his smile and his swagger, but the script doesn't take us anywhere fresh when it leaves the barroom.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 21, 2013

Cruise's name on the marquee is plenty to insure the success of the film, even if it is lopsided, shallow, and slips the audience a Mickey Finn at the outset.

| May 21, 2013

This vacant, misshapen film is basically an extended beer commercial that presents the world as a ludicrous place populated by sex-and-cash-and-booze-crazed zomboids. Cruise, meanwhile, comes off as a somewhat taller Spuds MacKenzie.

| May 21, 2013

Cocktail is a meandering, shapeless film, without the force of character to resist any of the cliches that come its way.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 21, 2013