Cocktail was penned by Imtiaz Ali. Cocktail 2 has been written by Luv Ranjan. Imtiaz Ali is the genius behind iconic scripts like Jab We Met, Rockstar, Tamasha, Amar Singh Chamkila and last Friday’s Main Vaapas Aaunga, to name just a few. The three Pyaar Ka Punchnama films, Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar belong to Luv Ranjan. This review could have ended here itself, but I am not that lucky. Well, I watched Cocktail 2, so I didn’t exactly wake up clutching a fortune cookie on this particular filmi Friday.
There is one man common to both Cocktail films — director Homi Adajania. Adajania has had a chequered career, travelling the spectrum from an indie gem like Being Cyrus to messy masala like Murder Mubarak. Cocktail — that spurred conversations, positive and negative, close to a decade-and-a-half ago — remains his most well-known work. Most notably, it gave us Deepika Padukone 2.0, transforming her from being seen as largely a pretty face to a bona fide, serious actress. Her Veronica may have ultimately been criticised for sacrificing the character’s liberated nature to fit into patriarchal expectations, but here is a woman who has definitely gone down in the annals of commercial Bollywood cinema history.
Cocktail 2 has its own Veronica, with no rocket science needed to gauge who it is. Kriti Sanon has, after all, fought off comparisons with Deepika from pretty early on in her career, and with mentor Dinesh Vijan as producer, the tall, lithe actress is a shoo-in for the part of Ally, a bohemian wild child who dresses like Veronica and delivers spiels about living life king-size like Katrina Kaif’s Laila in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Ally, however, doesn’t have the personality or pizzazz of either.
But we meet Ally much later. There is Kunal (Shahid Kapoor) and Diya (Rashmika Mandanna), an affluent couple living together in Delhi in what appears to be a rock-solid relationship, to first contend with. Kunal is a successful restaurateur and Diya a corporate high-flier, but we don’t see them working. They have far more important things to do like travelling, prepping for a wedding and decoding what is love to the point of all of it becoming a major irritant for the viewer. They also double-check a familiar criterion of the Gen-Z handbook handed out to Bollywood rom-com filmmakers for free — marriage, they believe, is not for them.
An opportunity to get away from nosey aunts and uncles comes in the form of a trip to Italy. The first half of Cocktail 2 is a travelogue, one that takes you from cobbled streets to verdant vineyards, aquamarine beaches to quaint villas. A lot of it will remind you of ZNMD again, but in that much superior film, Zoya Akhtar had transformed Spain into a living, breathing character and an indispensable backdrop. Cocktail 2 could have been set in any part of Europe and you wouldn’t have noticed the difference. The setting is pleasing to the eye and may perhaps warrant a call to your travel agent (but foreign trips now are a no-no, remember?), but remains vacuous in the larger scheme of things.
It is in Sicily that Kunal and Diya chance upon the latter’s old friend Ally. That sparks off an hour that promises to be fun, but apart from the infectiously hummable Jab talak, Pritam’s score is a damp squib. Even as the threesome (ahem!) make merry, Diya — whose insipid characterisation is only challenged by Rashmika’s dodgy Hindi accent — asks Ally to be “a true friend” (who she hasn’t kept in touch with for a decade, by the way) and “seduce” Kunal in order to test whether he truly loves his girlfriend of 16 years or not. This incomprehensible request is triggered by a throwaway joke by Kunal about fidelity, with no basis in reality. By the time you eye-roll your pupils right out of their sockets, Kunal and Ally have hit it off, in ways more than “just friends” do. A proposal, wedding plans and a trip back to desi shores follow swiftly. And before we know it, Ally has transitioned from seducer to seduced, from fun friend to determined relationship-breaker.
There was some initial conjecture of Cocktail 2 being a same-sex love story between Ally and Diya, with Kunal’s entry driving a wedge between the girlfriends. We so wish the ultimate script would have been as edgy and refreshing. Turns out, Cocktail 2 trudges into the same territory as its predecessor, but without giving Ally the kind of heartfelt backstory and emotional heft which, despite the problematic traits of the character, made us understand Veronica and perhaps even root for her. Hindi cinema’s predilection to now write flawed female characters is a hit and miss. While the recent Netflix offering Maa Behen hit bullseye, Ally is way off the mark.
Luv Ranjan, as his films have made it evident enough, doesn’t have the ability to paint women beyond being stupid or scheming. Ally’s stereotypical depiction of an ungirded spirit is reinforced through repeated talk about how she sleeps naked, has had multiple partners and gets “bored” of the same man, lifestyle and city. The best way to describe it is myopic, though Kriti tries her best to rise above the terribly written part. Rashmika doesn’t fare better, with the tug-of-war between the two women being inexplicably mined for laughs, jarred by a loud background score that turns what should have been a serious scenario into an unintentional joke.
In the case of Cocktail 2, the man isn’t spared either. Kunal — described as “a green forest” at one point — is one of the saddest characters you would have watched on screen in some time. That applies to both joy being seemingly sucked out of him — Shahid only springs to life in the dance sequences — as well as in the way the character is presented and portrayed. Vapid for the most part, Kunal is treated like a puppet, with a consistent character trait: he is hungover through most of the film. That is, perhaps, how Shahid managed to sleepwalk through this shoot.
Shahid gets a monologue at the end — a Ranjan staple — comparing true love to habit built over years of trust. And though he draws a parallel between his steady relationship and a worn-out T-shirt (not really complimentary), that one moment tells us the kind of film Cocktail 2 could have been if it had tried hard enough.
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