It tells the story of a business student, who takes up bartending in order to make ends meet.

Despite earning overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, and winning the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture, the film was a huge box office success, grossing more than $170 million worldwide against a budget of $20 million, becoming the eighth highest-grossing film of 1988.

Cocky Brian Flanagan, recently discharged from the army, heads home to New York City, hoping to land a high-powered business job.

Two years later, Brian is working at a beachside bar in Jamaica, hoping to save enough money for his own establishment.

The next morning, Brian regrets the fling and seeks out Jordan, only to find she returned to the United States.

While attending an art exhibit, Brian has an altercation with the artist in front of Bonnie's friends, leading them to break up.

Brian tries again to talk to Jordan, but a neighbor says she moved into her parents’ upscale Park Avenue apartment.

Brian finds Doug on his yacht and believes he has finally achieved the financial success they both sought.

However, Doug tells him that when his business began to fail, he invested all of Kerry's money in commodities and lost her entire wealth.

He fights his way up to the apartment, tells Jordan about Doug's death, and says he does not want to make the same mistake by being too proud to ask for help.

Gould said he "met a lot of interesting people behind the bar and very rarely was it someone who started out wanting to be a bartender.

So I tried to walk that thin line between giving them what they wanted and not completely betraying the whole arena of saloons in general.

[7] Gould says the tricks involving throwing bottles was not in the book, but something he showed Cruise and Bryan Brown.

[5] During the love scene between Coral and Brian, when Cruise grabbed Gershon's stomach she accidentally struck him in the nose with her knee.

[9] Kelly Lynch later said the film "was actually a really complicated story about the '80s and power and money, and it was really re-edited where they completely lost my character's backstory—her low self-esteem, who her father was, why she was this person that she was—but it was obviously a really successful movie, if not as good as it could've been."

The website's critical consensus reads, "There are no surprises in Cocktail, a shallow, dramatically inert romance that squanders Tom Cruise's talents in what amounts to a naive barkeep's banal fantasy.

[14] Vincent Canby of The New York Times gave a negative review, calling it "an upscale, utterly brainless variation on those efficient old B-movies of the 1930s and 40s about the lives, loves and skills of coal miners, sand hogs, and telephone linemen, among others.

"[15] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was also critical, explaining that "the more you think about what really happens in Cocktail, the more you realize how empty and fabricated it really is.

[17] The official soundtrack single, The Beach Boys' "Kokomo", was commercially successful and topped the charts in the United States, Australia and Japan.

[19] The film was also nominated for Worst Picture at the 1988 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards but lost to Caddyshack II.