Cocktail 2 movie review: Shahid Kapoor, Kriti Sanon, and Rashmika Mandanna’s glossy vacation drama is dragged down by a wafer-thin plot

The 2012 film Cocktail, directed by Homi Adajania, received mixed responses from critics as well as at the box office on its release. The film’s story was termed problematic by some, where a man-child first has a passionate romance with a short-skirt-wearing, trouble-maker modern girl and then falls deeply in love with a homely girl, whom his mother approves of. Over the years, a certain age group gave the film a cult status. While Cocktail wasn’t anything great to write home about, it should be credited for giving great music, by Pritam, and presenting Deepika Padukone in a completely different avatar. Deepika was splendid in the film as the problematic Veronica, who has a heart of gold, even though she puts up an act of nonchalance all the time. In most scenes, Deepika shone more than her co-stars, Saif Ali Khan and debutant Diana Penty. More than a decade later, Adajania is back with a spiritual sequel, Cocktail 2, which also centres around three individuals entangled in love and complications. The original Cocktail was middling in any case, but the sequel makes the original look superior in terms of storytelling.

The first film was written by Imtiaz Ali, who is known to present women as strong individuals, as saviours of problematic men. Cocktail 2 has Luv Ranjan and Tarun Jain as writers. Ranjan usually presents women as selfish, controlling and conniving and men as the henpecked, innocent beings. So you can easily understand how Cocktail 2 pans out.

What’s the plot of Cocktail 2

Diya (Rashmika Mandanna) and Kunal (Shahid Kapoor) have been together for over a decade. Successful and comfortable with each other as live-in partners, they don't want to take the plunge and marry just because society wants a label on their relationship. As the marriage season dons upon Delhi, the two decide to escape questions about their plans to marry and head to Italy for a long vacation. There, they meet Ally(Kriti Sanon), Diya’s old friend from Uni days, who decides to be the third wheel in the relationship and show them around Italy.

Ally is a person who gets bored easily, we are told. She is also constantly dressed for the beach and is very self-aware of her hotness. At one point, she admits that no man can ever resist her advances. That makes her friend, the mildly suspicious and very controlling Diya, hatch a plan to test her man and his loyalty for her. She asks Ally to seduce him to check his response. Ally mentions that the plan is risky, but Diya insists on it. What follows is a bizarre, long-drawn process of the two women pushing the man to the brink, just to test his loyalty to his longtime partner.

Things obviously get complicated as love happens by chance amid all the flirting and seducing, but relationships and friendships get complicated.

What works

Shot in parts of Italy, Cocktail 2 is visually stunning. Shot by cinematographer Santhana Krishnan Ravichandran, who, with his frames, sets the vibe of Italian summer well. A large part of the film has Kunal and Ally soaking in the sun on the beach, conversing and getting to know each other. Sicily comes alive in each frame where the story is set in the first half. Styled by Anaita Shroff Adajania, the film has the leads looking stunning, especially Kriti Sanon.

Much like the first film, Cocktail 2 is beutiful songs by Pritam, including a love ballad by Arijit Singh.

What does not work

The plot is wafer-thin and stretched over 150 minutes. It some point, one gets impatient at their trio’s first-world problems of infertility and relationship issues. The film labels the women, like most Luv Ranjan-written films do. The bohemian, hot girl falls for the man while seducing him just for fun. So much so that she is ready to break his marriage. The girlfriend is bossy and controlling everything, and constantly doubting her man, even though he hasn’t given her any reasons to feel that way. The man is shown to be henpecked, behaving like a doormat to his girlfriend. From the first glimpse of the three characters, you know their character traits.

Among the actors, Kriti Sanon gets the maximum scope to perform. It's not a very well-written script in any case, but Sanon delivers her flawed character of Ally in most parts of the film. The other parts, she is busy imitating Deepika from the original film. Rashmika’s strong accent gets in the way of her delivering a solid performance. Among the three leads, Shahid Kapoor is perhaps the most talented and seasoned. But the makers hardly make him perform to his best. In the greater part of the film, Shahid is shown to be a quiet observer who silently obeys his lady love. When you have an actor of Shahid’s calibre in the film, why waste him playing someone so quiet?

Final Verdict

Cocktail 2 aims to cater to the younger generation. Perhaps the problems and complexities shown in the film are more identifiable to the young audience. Unfortunately, the writer of this review does not belong to that age group. While the film attempts to highlight modern dar friendships and relationships, in times of social media, it fails to connect with a very poorly written story. The actors are all good, perform to their parts and look stunning on screen, but that doesn't alleviate a very mediocre film.

When the first teaser of Cocktail 2 had come out, there were rumours that the story would have Rashmika cheating on Shahid with Kriti. Had they actually explored that angle, that plot would have worked better.

Cocktail 2 is running in theatres across the country.