The Good But The Bad: Over The Top & Cocktail
I continue to lose my mind at the 80s films. What about this era gives me a warm blanket feeling or the sensation of running home as a kid to dinner being ready? I had the pleasure of crafting my double feature of Over The Top, and Cocktail, and I had a good time. These are two of the many ‘good but bad movies’ we have given to us by the two superstar actors we have, Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone. Both of them have dismissed these films in recent years and convinced themselves it doesn’t exist in their filmography. The reason why I don’t buy or understand why they do not claim these films is how each of their performances convinced us they were in the making of a classic - which they were regardless of Over The Top being a financial and critical failure and Cocktail being stomped on by the critics while still making money.
My time with Sly started with of course, with the Rocky franchise. My older brother owned the DVD box set with all five films back when you had to take care of a case and cover that wasn’t your iPhone. I was shown all five films over two days and looked at Stallone as a hero. As a kid born in 2002, I thought Stallone was just Rocky Balboa and never acted in anything else again. And in one of the handful of family outings to the theaters, my parents took my brother and me to watch Rocky Balboa in 2006. The audience in the theater still cheered all the years later in the Rocky versus Mason Dixon fight. Even then, I knew Rocky could drop dead in the ring at any moment and veins on an older man like that seemed unnatural and unhealthy. Stallone continued to appear throughout my childhood when a Bootleg DVD of Get Carter plopped onto the coffee table in my living room; I don’t think anyone in my family watched it. As time passed, Stallone’s star grew to the heights of the 1980s for Gen Zers when he came out with the first Expendables film with another Rambo thrown into the mix a few years prior. Still, I thought this guy was the most invincible old man I have ever seen. As my love for films and curiosity grew, I was able to go back in Sly’s career and watch his films, mostly to understand how big this guy was during the 1980s.
Every couple of years, I’ll revisit the Rocky films. I’ll start with Rocky I, skip over Rocky II because I’ve seen it enough and realized it is slower than the rest, then watch Rocky III and IV, leaving out V, because who else watches it if we’re doing a marathon? The time in between Rocky viewings reminds me of how absurd and amazing these films are once we reach the third installment. Stallone was at his peak stardom with his heart pounding out of his chest, trying to put pen to paper writing and directing these films. “Can he swim?”, “With a name like Rock?”. Even with the montage of Rocky speeding around at night with close-ups of his face in preparation for the fight against Drago, no one questions the corniness but endless joy it brings to viewers on each watch.
Seamlessly, I arrived at watching Cobra, where Stallone cracked the earth's surface being Lieutenant Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti chewing on a match, carrying a gun with a snake emblem, and cutting a slice of pizza with scissors. He can do whatever he pleases and it is apparent reality was a suggestion for Sly as he seemed preoccupied with off-screen and on-screen love interest at the time, Bridgitte Nielsen. Cobra is great, I’ll defend it. Over The Top comes out a year after Cobra and this Stallone is a truck driver who is also a National Arm Wrestling champion who also is trying to reconnect with his estranged son. Nothing reeks of 80s excess like that cocaine-binged pitch in that exact cadence. The film manages to suck you in for 90 minutes and causes you to ignore the question, “Why am I watching this?” in the back of your head. But when you understand and appreciate Sly, you just have to wait until the end and see how he pulls it off since we do not believe his character Lincoln Hawk can even operate a tractor-trailer. It’s still Stallone baby oiled and grunting - don’t take it the wrong way and get your head out of the gutter, but those were the ingredients to make a successful action film - they still are, instead, it’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
Just a year after Over The Top came Cocktail in 1988 starring Tom Cruise - when his teeth were still crooked. What led us to think was a rags-to-riches story turned out to be a bartending movie with a sudden twist of premarital sex and the fear of fatherhood. Cocktail follows Brian Flanagan, who just comes back home from the army to New York City looking for work. When he can’t cut it as Financial District material, he stumbles into a TGI Fridays where he is taken under the wing of Doug Coughlin, who gives him a job and teaches him the quick and easy ways to make money in this world. Cocktail can be about a plethora of things. But when you sit back and try to think of one, you can’t. All we see is Tom Cruise hearing “Addicted to Love” for the first time. Cruise manages to bring to life a film that would not work without him because of its thin plot and hazy heart of a message to an audience about the American dream. All I took away was how I need to rethink how much I tip my bartenders when they deserve it.
For anyone born in the 2000s again, Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt to most. Brains leaked when he reprised the role of Pete Mitchell in the Top Gun sequel and some kids asked, “There was a first one?”. But when you have parents like mine who raised my brother and me to be cultured and appreciate movies they loved, they made it an act of ceremony for us to sit down and watch The Firm, A Few Good Men, Rain Man, or Jerry Maguire because as my mother would say, “Those are gooood movies.” Tom Cruise is the only actor to bring my father out to the movie theaters with his continuation of the Mission: Impossible franchise because, for past generations, they are the only good movies being made these days. So for those wanting to see Cruise’s talents of the 80s, Risky Business, Top Gun, of course, Color of Money, and then Cocktail. I’m aware of Born on the Fourth of July but the focus is movie star Cruise, not actor Cruise.
The good but bad movie archetype is left behind in the 1980s. People were not as aware of what was being created back then nor did they think anyone would revisit the films or write about them almost 40 years later. I’m not sure why we show so much grace to the generally hated work of our most beloved actors.
