Cocktail (2012) Director: Homi Adajania Rating: **

Cocktail is a story of three characters - Gautam, Veronica and Meera; Their friendship-> relationships-> Love -> conflicts -> climax. The first half of the film has got some funny moments, but second half gets way too melodramatic.

Acting : Deepika Padukone - She plays the carefree, flamboyant Veronica effortlessly and her character is the most complex one out of the three. Her breakdown scene in the club is brilliantly shot and acted.. and you can empathize with her character. This is her best performance to date.

Saif Ali Khan's performance is disappointing. Considering the number of times he has played this kind of role before (from Yeh dillagi to Hum Tum), this character should have been a cakewalk for him, but it's not. He fails to impress here.

Newcomer Diana Penty looks pretty and that about it. She wears 2-3 expressions through, but she is much better than Imtiaz's previous discovery Nargis Fakhri(Rockstar). Also, her voice (dubbed?) was not in sync with the dialogs.

Music: Pritam's soundtrack is impressive. All the songs are chartbusters already. Irshad Kamil's (lyricist of Rockstar) lyrics are in the context of the movie and they actually convey emotions of the characters... especially luttna and tum hi ho bandhu.. and last but not the least- Arif Lohar's cult classic 'Jugni ji' (from Coke studio) gets film picturisation.

Writing: The writer Imtiaz Ali has become master of heartaches now. Each of the movie directed/written by him had had this element. Some of the scenes in Cocktail are well-written. At some places film tries to break B'wood clichés..Like when love triangle gets complex, Saif tries to resolve the conflict directly by face-to-face conversation..rather than creating unnecessary misunderstandings between the characters. But at the same time, movie brings out some outdated scenes like - Dimple offering her kangan (bangles) for her prospective daughter-in-law, while travelling through a ship in South Africa.

You can still watch Cocktail for Deepika Padukone's performance and some good moments captured through the movie. But overall this is a low energy cocktail which just ends up being a mocktail.

Rating: 2 out of 5