Now would L. Ron approve of this?: "Cocktail"

Personally, I favor Patrick Swayze when it comes to guilty movie pleasures -- "Red Dawn," "Next of Kin" and especially "Road House." But a strong contender for "So bad it's good, but not really" is "Cocktail," and here's why:

1. Tom Cruise ("Endless Love") coming off of "Top Gun" and essentially saying, "I can take a big crap on screen and gross $100 mil!"
2. The tagline: "When he pours, he reigns." Gag, and I like bad puns.
3. Elisabeth Shue, who looked amazing in "Adventures in Babysitting" but not as good here. Why? Well, "Babysitting" took place in Chicago in the winter, when we couldn't see her in a swimsuit. Yeah, I know. Ouch.
4. Bryan "FX" Brown, chewing up every single scene he's in while Cruise looks like a goof.
5. Some horribly great lines -- words of "advice" -- including one I often cite to this day: "All things end badly, or else they wouldn't end."

So yeah, this tale of a young would-be entrepreneur who ends up becoming a superstar bartender while never really giving up his dreams offers all sorts of delights. While I would never recommend anyone set aside 104 minutes to watch "Cocktail," if you should come across it one late weekend morning while reading the paper and watching over your sick wife, it's a highly entertaining time-killer. Hey, it's not like I couldn't pay attention and still read the sports pages. We're not talking "Casablanca" here.

As I mentioned, Cruise finds himself tending bar in New York with Brown, who shows him the ropes and makes the two of them local stars, thanks mostly to the whirly-twirly of bottles, batting of eyes and belting out of "poems." It's all rather festive, never mind that the elaborate routines put on by these guys mean that a person gets served, oh, maybe every five minutes. Sure, that's good business.

Anyway, Cruise and Brown have a falling out, Tommy heads to Jamaica, meets Shue, runs into Brown again, hooks up with some rich woman, goes back to New York, breaks up with rich woman, finds Shue again, finds Brown again, and finds all sorts of trouble before we reach the end. If that sounds like a lot, it is, and "Cocktail" certainly doesn't lack for action. Character development? Aw, that's for sissies!

Like I said, Brown is somewhat entertaining, but everything else is merely laughable. It's not like Cruise did any great acting in "Top Gun," either, but this is truly mindless fluff. Consider that by this time he also had done "Risky Business" and "The Color of Money," and "Rain Man" and "Born on the Fourth of July" were just around the corner. In other words, the guy can act. Just not with bottles flying through the air, I guess.