Cocktail is pretty bad. But it’s also bad enough, that some of it is really enjoyable. And it’s hard tot believe this came right between Rain Man and Born on the 4th of July for Tom Cruise.

The narrative falls apart about halfway through the film, and it never quite decides what it wants to be. But there are a few things that I really enjoy. Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown in the bartending scenes that involve a lot of flipping bottles. And the other aspect of the film I enjoy, Elisabeth Shue.

If I crushed on Shue in Karate Kid, I was absolutely stunned by her in Cocktail. Just wow.

The story such as it is, sees Cruise’s Brian Flanagan trying to come up with get rich quick schemes when he gets nowhere job hunting in New York. He goes to college and ends up working part-time for Doug Coughlin (Brown), and together the two shine.

And despite claiming to be friends, Coughlin has no problems screwing Flanagan over when it comes to money and women. So Flanagan absconds to Jamaica, which has some beautiful location work, and music, and shortly after Coughlin and his new wife (Kelly Lynch) show up, the wheels really fall off.

The narrative slides all over the place. Instead of being the Top Gun of bartender movies, the second half languishes in melodrama as Flanagan tries to figure out his life, and where Coughlin and Jordan (Shue) fit in to it.

And what does success mean to him?

The film rarely works, but it really looks like Brown and Cruise are having a good time behind the bar, and those are the moments that really shine in a rather lackluster film. And yet, it did gang busters at the theater, despite being trounced by critics.

I did like the soundtrack.

It’s a mess, and yet, you watch it. The film never recovers the energy that it exudes in the first half, and that is to its detriment. Honestly, they could have taken the annual bartender competition, set it in the islands, and have Flanagan get involved in that, and then end up in competition with Coughlin.

Shue, as beautiful and engaging as she is, doesn’t get enough to do. Again to the film’s detriment. Much like Coughlin and Flanagan, she’s in the service industry too, there would have been so much to mine for all the characters there.

Still, after not having seen it since it came out, it still ends up being a pretty good bad watch.