I watched Cocktail and The Dark Knight Rises last weekend. Life has been better.

I have been on a little blog break. Why, you as? Oh nothing much, I was recovering from having watched the movie Cocktail. It was a week back actually, but the staggering effect remains.  Let me break it down for you.

Saif Ali Khan’s character Gautam is a douche-bag. He goes from Delhi to London for a job, that we cannot guess the nature of till the very end. He has the worst pickup lines in history. But that doesn’t matter, because they seem to work real fine. No, he doesn’t look charming at all. He looks very much the 42 years old that he is and not in the sexy philosophy professor with slight greying hair way.

Deepika Padukone , Veronica in the movie, lives in a bachelorette pad in London, is the wild party girl whose parents don’t bother to call her much and just send her moolah, lot of. She doesn’t like to wear pants.

Diana Penty, whose character is called Meera, comes to London thinking she will be welcomed by her new husband Randeep Hooda, but he shoo-es her away. She cries in a retsaurant washroom wear she meets Veronica. Rich girl takes her home and gives her food, shelter and new western clothing. Thats a good thing for us who like to see long legs.

Anyway, long story short, Gautam and Veronica are dating casually. Gautam’s mom wants to get him married and surprise visits him in London and sees him in a Viking tramp queen costume. Veronica is not wearing pants so he can’t introduce her to his mom as his lover. So he says Meera is the one. Somewhere after this, Gautam and Meera kiss and its discovered that they love eachother. Meera feels that she is betraying her benefactor but they tell Veronica about it anyway. Veronica says she is ok but in a drinking binge reveals she loves Gautam too (WHY?!!!) in a very serious way and so Meera leaves. Then in another drunken stupor Veronica is in an accident, badly hurt, Gautam sees her through her recovery. Veronica decides that its good to be like Meera- to wear pants, to pray to Hindu idols, and spend time in the kitchen. Then she decides that she ought to be selfless (apparently yet another trait of an ideal Indian woman) and she tales Gautam to Meera in Delhi. In the end, there is another session of bad pickup lines and Gautam and Meera get together.

By the end of Cocktail, I wanted to kill myself but I made a few notes and comments.

The best thing about Cocktail : Deepika Padukone’s legs that go on for a mile.

The worst thing about Cocktail : Depiction of skewed ideas of what it is to be an “ideal Indian woman”- as someone who dresses modestly, is tamed, god-fearing,  settles for any guy,  etc.

Some questions worth pondering over-

1. Who was the alcohol sponsor for th movie? Can he sponsor me for life? No really, the number of shots of Deepika taking shots and swigs of bottles are immense. Infact, we can make a drinking game out of it.

2. Was Randeep Hooda in Fight Club or something? Why is he battered or physically hurt in different ways in every scene he features? In one scene his hand is fractured, in another, his nose is bandaged. There are no explanations given for any of his.

3. Why is the movie called cocktail? These guys mostly took swigs of bottles and were the most boring mix of people to come by, ever.

Anyway, to recover from the shock of Cocktail, I went to watch The Dark Knight Rises over the weekend. It was really interesting to see how all the Nolan fans ganged up against critics who gave bad reviews for the movie and the whole debacle of reviews being shut down till the weekend. 

Oh well, all I am going to say is that Nolan has done better and I like The Dark Knight better than the latest of the trilogy. This latest one was ofcourse nicely tempered with the climax and suspense being well executed. But with Bane (Tom Hard was great in this role btw), the villain, there was a discourse on anarchy and capitalism that desperately ought to be more carefully tackled and tread upon. I also think, that The Dark Knight Rises  stretching 2 hours 45 minutes, was  longer than necessary and some editing would have helped. I love DC comics and I love Christopher Nolan, but thats just what I think about this movie yougaiz. You are free to throw rotten tomatoes at me.