Cocktail 2

Fourteen years after Deepika Padukone danced barefoot on our heartstrings as the chaotic, unforgettable Veronica, Homi Adajania returns to the bar with Cocktail 2 but ends up serving a lukewarm mocktail of ideas and aesthetics. The narrative playground shifts from the rainy, moody streets of London to the sun-drenched, high-fashion cliffs of Sicily. Kunal (Shahid Kapoor) and Diya (Rashmika Mandanna), a live-in couple whose decade-long bond has survived a long-distance relationship and COVID-19, hit a gorgeous obstacle in the form of Ally (Kriti Sanon) during a vacation in Italy. Trying to separate habit from commitment, and responsibility from burden, Diya decides to test Kunal’s loyalty by asking Ally to seduce him.

A Gen Z rom-com with a millennial soul and the heart of an overgrown child, Cocktail 2 is a hit-or-miss mix of tips about life, love and uncharted adventures in Sicily that do not fully dissolve into the breezy, pulpy potion that the film seeks to serve up. The pearls of wisdom that it bandies about stick out rather awkwardly as another menage e trois led by a young man in an open relationship navigates the ebbs and tides of the heart and the desires of two women who are polar opposites. Coming 14 years after Cocktail, which was about two equally dissimilar ladies making impulsive choices, right or wrong, and holding up a mirror to the wayward ways of an entitled, commitment-phobic philanderer, the follow-up scampers in a different direction and winds up (along with its three principal characters) in a place where confusion runs riot.

पहली बात-यह फिल्म ‘कॉकटेल 2’ 2012 में आई सैफ अली खान, डायना पेंटी, दीपिका पादुकोण (गौतम, मीरा, वेरोनिका) वाली फिल्म ‘कॉकटेल’ का सीक्वेल नहीं है। उस फिल्म में भी दो लड़कियों और एक लड़के के बीच के रिश्तों का कॉकटेल था, इसमें भी है, सो इस फिल्म का नाम वैसा ही रख दिया गया। हालांकि कुछ और भी रखा जा सकता था लेकिन फिर ‘कॉकटेल’ के ब्रांड-नेम का फायदा नहीं मिल पाता न। अपने फ्लेवर में यह फिल्म उसी के जैसी है-रंगीन, बोल्ड, दिल-दिमाग से ज़्यादा आंखों को भाने वाली। दीया और कुणाल कई साल से एक साथ रह रहे हैं। ‘शादी कब करोगे’ के सवाल पर तंग आकर वे खुद कहते हैं कि शादी के बाद किए जाने वाले सारे काम वे कर चुके हैं, बस रस्में बाकी हैं। वे छुट्टी मनाने इटली जाते हैं जहां मिलती है दीया की सहेली जिसका नाम है ऐली, रहती है अकेली और है जैसे कोई पहेली। दीया के कहने पर ऐली कुणाल पर लाइन मारती है ताकि उसकी वफादारी चैक की जा सके। कुणाल फिसलता है या नहीं लेकिन ऐली ज़रूर फिसल जाती है। अब भसड़ यह मची है कि कुणाल किस से शादी करेगा या कौन कुणाल से शादी करेगी या कुणाल शादी करेगा भी या नहीं।

‘Ooh, a threesome?’ ‘Hawww, noooo, just checking’. This could well be a tagline for Cocktail 2, a spiritual sequel of the 2012 original of the same name, which once again gives us a guy and two girls looking for The One. Kunal (Shahid Kapoor) plays a dashing chef whose mere presence makes irate female customers swoon. But he’s perfectly content with the love of his life, Diya (Rashmika Mandana), and the two have settled into post-hangover-burpy-domesticity minus the pheras: shaadi, who needs that, when the two are miya and biwi in all but name? On a holiday in stunning Sicily, a chance encounter with the free-spirited Ally (Kriti Sanon), an old friend of Diya’s, becomes the third side of the triangle. Ally is single, and ever ready to mingle, and following through on a wholly contrived ruse, finds herself alone with Kunal: will the two find more than one chance to stray, and how will that impact our lovey-dovey jodi? Who will be the twosome, and who will walk away, all lonesome?

We got to be kidding ourselves if we thought films like Cocktail have anything to do with modern day love or changing relationship dynamics. Thriving on styling more than storytelling, fashion and far flung destinations flush its frames like ’90s escapism once did with dream sequences of dancing in the Swiss Alps. When Homi Adajania’s Cocktail came out in 2012, what caught everyone’s fancy was Deepika Padukone’s loosened-up avatar, Diana Penty’s poised debut and the twain painting London red in a wardrobe full of chic clothing. What didn’t blow anyone’s mind was watching rom-com’s worn-out poster boy Saif Ali Khan fool around women half his age in a disappointingly conventional love triangle penned by Imtiaz Ali.

Laziness in mainstream Bollywood isn’t conditional; it’s constitutional. Cocktail 2 is a mocktail of a movie; sugary slop pretending to be the real deal. It’s populated by caricatures and not characters, set in locations that feel like postcards and not actual, lived-in places. Perhaps this is all by design; perhaps inauthenticity is the aspiration. But there has to be an element of truth even in the most far-fetched of falsehoods; there has to be something for those being duped, in this case, the audience, to latch on to. You could put Cocktail 2 under a microscope, or dip it in a chemical, and you still wouldn’t be able to decipher what truth it’s trying to get at. One thing is for sure, though, it is among the most misogynistic movies that mainstream Bollywood has made in a long time, which, for an industry that thrives on misogyny, is saying something.