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"     Employing the oft-used love triangle convention, Cocktail could easily have wound up as a trite rehash of Love Aaj Kal, but is, in fact, a very modern relationship drama that keeps you engaged by virtue of a keen blend of dialogue, bold characters and a dash of brazen modernity to give it that extra kick. Gautam Kapoor (Saif Ali Khan) is a newly-arrived NRI software engineer. Harmless and &amp;quot;happy like a pig rolling in s**t all day&amp;quot;, he&amp;#039;s a chancer who will readily try his luck on the first attractive woman to cross his path. Wild child Veronica (Deepika Padukone) is a self-professed &amp;#039;rich bitch&amp;#039; and a woman of the times who unashamedly flits from one casual encounter to the next. She readily opens her home to the meek and nubile Meera (Diana Penty) - and her bedroom to Gautam.  Kapoor sums up the dilemma succinctly - &amp;#039;You love me. I love her&amp;#039; - as friendship and love converge with painful consequences. Cocktail brings Indian cinema into the real world of modern relationships, portraying all the complexities that falling in love engenders. It&amp;#039;s rare for Indian rom-coms to explore the darker neuroses of the central characters, but amidst all the laughs and witticisms it&amp;#039;s this unravelling of the protagonists that results in a story with edge. Khan excels as the cheeky but loveable philanderer, displaying a brand of charm and wit which, we have admittedly, witnessed before. While there are unexpected smatterings of depth and maturity, Khan plays it for laughs, shedding his inhibitions along with his clothes and appearing to revel in a slightly disturbing, but hilarious drag act. Padukone captures the vivacious Veronica&amp;#039;s descent into jealousy, exposing the wounded core of a woman abandoned by her parents and faced with the crushing heartache that comes of love lost. Her heartbreak is palpable as she embarks on an alcohol-fuelled rampage and desperately tries to re-invent herself into a clone of the rather more nubile Meera. It&amp;#039;s a daring performance and Padukone is intermittently mesmerising. Debutante Penty manages to hold her own against Padukone as the archetypal good girl, requiring her to look interchangeably coy, sweet and sad. While she&amp;#039;s not stretched, she adeptly captures the character&amp;#039;s innocence and her sense of new-found freedom.  There&amp;#039;s a natural interplay between Khan and Boman Irani, while Dimple Kapadia impresses as the menopausal Punjabi matriarch, eager to saddle her son off. With films such as Jab We Met and Rockstar to his credit, Imtiaz Ali sure knows how to pen a script and the dialogue is central to why this film works. A glaring allusion to One Day aside, Ali manages to inject a usual story with a dose of originality. With uninhibited talk of pre-marital and casual sex, drunken nights of debauchery, implied drug use and &amp;#039;awesome threesomes&amp;#039;, Cocktail is very much of the times and a shot in the arm of the rom-com genre. A heady blend of terse dialogue, slick cinematography, an electric soundtrack and engaging characters, Cocktail will appeal in particular to the margarita-swilling members of the audience and those well-versed in the perils and permissiveness of modern dating life. The drinks are on Saif, who has reason enough to celebrate. Cocktails all round!  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/bollywood/review/a393328/cocktail-review-a-brazen-take-on-the-bollywood-love-triangle/>