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Cocktail 2 gets its modern women grossly wrong. Not all ‘other woman’ needs to be a femme fatale or an antagonist. And Rashmika Mandanna’s the weakest link of the narrative.
Homi Adajania’s Cocktail 2 starring Shahid Kapoor, Kriti Sanon and Rashmika Mandanna, is now running in cinemas.
Cocktail 2A
2.5/5
Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Kriti Sanon and Rashmika MandannaDirector: Homi AdajaniaMusic: Pritam
Cocktail 2 Movie Review: Cocktail 2 is a lot like the idea of love. Love is messy, complicated, egoistic, selfish, jealous, heartbreaking. But the idea of it is glossy, euphoric, aesthetic, dreamy. This film is too polished, too picture perfect, too luminous and too worried about looking fashionable all the time to dig deep into the emotional chaos, intricacies and contradictions of relationships.
Ultimately, what we’re left with is a one-tone, predictable and quintessential Bollywood love triangle where two women squabble over a man, who doesn’t quite have the pull or the comic timing of Cocktail’s Gautam (played by Saif Ali Khan). To put it plainly, Cocktail 2 is like old wine in a not-so- new bottle that we’ve tasted too many times.
This is the story of college sweethearts Kunal, a chef, and Diya, who works at a corporate firm. They’re in a live-in relationship and have known each other for about 16 years. They’ve braved long distance, arguments and Covid-19 and emerged as the perfect couple who has figured it all out together or so it seems.
But relatives and elders are hell bent on getting them married. The lovebirds, however, are happy just staying together without having to formalise their relationship on a piece of paper. To escape marriage questions during the wedding season, they decide to jet off to Sicily with the money they’ve saved by not splurging on a big fat Indian wedding.
There, they bump into Ally, Diya’s friend and roommate at Trueford University. The girls meet after ten long years and pick up from where they left. Ally’s entry is like a blessing in disguise as she elevates the screenplay. Now, Diya is someone who doubts her ‘green flag’ partner’s commitment towards her. To test his loyalty, she urges Ally to seduce him. Yes, you heard that right.
Ally, the voice of reason, ultimately gives in to Diya’s whims and plays along. But while role-playing, Ally genuinely falls in love with Kunal. Opposites, after all, attract. This twist is predictable from the word go. Naturally, all hell breaks lose. Now, these trio of characters is nothing we haven’t seen before.
Ally is modelled on Deepika Padukone’s Veronica. But she’s a trope. She conceals her deep emotional vulnerabilities beneath a confident, party-girl exterior. A free-spirited Bohemian soul, she has settled in Sicily after she fell in love with the city when she arrived there for a trip six months back. She’s dancer, always with a wine bottle in her hand.
She believes in love but doesn’t like being tied down by it. Forever is ‘bakwaas’ for her. You may wonder why a woman, who’s quick to reject men out of the fear of being rejected first, suddenly falls in love with Kunal! Her abandonement issues packs its bags and takes a hike. Is it because he cooks her kadhi chawal, the only thing she claims to miss about India? Is it because he strums his guitar for her?
We don’t know. But it’s okay. We can cut them some slack. Love, after all, can happen in the most unpredictable way. And yes, she’s sexy. We get that. We get that she makes both men and women turn their heads to look at her every time she walks down an alleyway in the picturesque Sicily. But was it really necessary to introduce Ally with a close up shot of her cleavage?
As for Diya, she’s the complete opposite of Ally. She’s in control of her life and knows what and who she wants. But she’s no Diana Penty’s Meera. There’s no backstory that can add some extra layer and character to her. Kunal, on the other hand, is handsome but there’s no gravitas to this character that can make him stand out. He makes you question if being non-confrontational and not calling the shots of his own life makes one a green flag.
At 2 hours 30 minutes, the film may not completely test your patience or drop its pace, but will make you wonder if such a lengthy runtime was necessary to repeat an age-old story about three people stuck in a love triangle. We only wish that fan theories of it being a lesbian love story or one themed on polygamy was true. At least, that would add a layer of novelty to the narrative.
The first half is breezy, fun and smooth. You almost feel like you’re on a chilled out holiday, sailing on the calm turquoise waters of Sicily. There are some moments that truly do stand out. In a scene, our bold and maverick Ally suddenly gets emotional and misty-eyed when she hugs a stranger holding a placard, asking for a free hug.
You almost feel like you’ll get to see a different side to her but director Homi Adajania isn’t interested in exploring that. In another, Kunal and Ally are seen engaged in a conversation by the sea. They’re curious about each other and they try to know each other deeper. Perhaps, there’s some bit of compatability beneath their opposite demeanours. At the same time, they’re subtly aware of the boundary they cannot cross.
Her heartbreak is almost palpable when Diya proposes to Kunal on that same trip and cuddles with him. She fights her tears and a shattered heart as she captures their special moment and plays the third wheel in this dynamic. But things take an aunderwhelming turn in the second half. Yes, there’s melodrama when Ally ends up at Diya and Kunal’s wedding in India. But that’s not the problem.
The problem arises with the gaze. It’s hard and sad to see two independent women catfighting over a man, almost caught up in a physical competition to see who can make the best hangover cure for him. It’s regressive to say the least. And then the strongest link in the film, Ally, is suddenly made to look like a villain. Sure, her ego is hurt and she clearly doesn’t take rejection too well.
But here, she’s presented as a home-wrecker, who’ll leave no stone unturned to win the man of her dreams even if it means backstabbing her friend. She explicitly flirts with Kunal and tells him ‘I love you’ before Diya and then calls him out for not saying it back to her. And later, at night, she almost forces him to express his emotions for him without fully knowing what he feels about her.
Well, a small note for the makers… Not all ‘other woman’ needs to be a femme fatale or an antagonist. She’s treated with almost no empathy and sensitivity in the post-interval block. In short, Cocktail 2 gets its modern women grossly wrong. You wonder if it’s a product of the morality-obsessed, woke brigade that often inteferes with creative freedom today.
Furthermore, the makers decide to play on emotional infidelity and raise some subtle questions on how different it is from physical infidelity and if it’s graver than the latter. But that’s not properly established either as this theme is only given a surface-level treatment. The saving grace, however, is its music. The visuals are stunning, the costumes are chic and the production design squeaky clean.
But is that enough for a story that claims to be a take on modern-day relationships? Where is the chaos? Where is the nuance? It almost appears as though the actors are so concerned about looking aesthetically perfect on screen that they refrain from shedding their vanity or surrendering fully to the vulnerability of the moments during emotional exchanges and breakdowns.
What remains the biggest highlight of Cocktail 2 is Kriti Sanon. She plays Ally with an impressive abandon and spunk. There’s always a bounce in her step and she is the sole driver of this narrative, taking the otherwise middling screenplay several notches higher. Shahid Kapoor as Kunal is nothing that we haven’t seen before. He fails to do any heavy-lifting due to a weakly written character.
However, he shares a sizzling chemistry with Kriti, both lighting up the screen as a collective. Rashmika Mandanna as Diya, unfortunately, gets the shortest end of the stick. She’s easily the weakest link of the narrative. Despite it being established that she’s from Hyderabad, her Hindi diction is jarring, constantly distracting you from the story flow. A one-tone character doesn’t help either.
Cocktail 2 wants to bottle the upheavals of modern love but is too afraid of spilling any of it. For all its talk of complicated relationships and emotional infidelity, it remains too safe. The designer clothes and postcard-perfect locations stand out but this intoxication is fleeting. Once the high wears off, you’re left with a rom-com that’s little romance and even lesser comedy.
About the Author
Titas Chowdhury is a Special Correspondent at News18 Showsha. She writes about cinema, music and gender in cinema. Interviewing actors and filmmakers, writing about latest trends in showbiz and bringi…Read More
