What’s Aged the Best?
Cruise and Coughlin bartending; Uncle Pat's never-buy-a-drink rule; Addicted to Love; Elisabeth Shue; the passed-out friend diagnosis; Roger Donaldson's late-80s run; Cruise playing basketball; the soundtrack
In the discussion (17)
Approx. transcript time · 00:44:20Read transcript
- Cruise and Coughlin bartending comes first: nothing beats Cruise fired up in a quirky role, and nobody else would have taken bottle flipping so seriously.
- Of all Cruise's mastered skills, this participant would most want to see him play nine ball. — Chris Ryan
- Cruise approaches roles by asking what skill he can acquire, unlike Daniel Day Lewis asking who he can become.
- Brian and Coughlin are called really bad, slow bartenders who make drinks for no one while 80 people wait.
- A nit pulled forward: the claim that bartenders make money for bars by pouring less, but they spill liquor everywhere while flipping bottles.
- Uncle Pat's rule never to buy anyone a drink has aged well and is a smart business strategy.
- New York buybacks are common; as a former bartender, topping up drinks for bigger tips steals from the bar, which is why an owner like Pat would not do it.
- Pat had no real growth plan: he accepts free labor from Brian and takes a dollar or two off the bar as tips.
- Addicted to Love and Shue, an 80s goddess, are listed, with Cocktail as a more adult Shue after The Karate Kid and Adventures in Babysitting.
- Cruise leaving 40 paying customers to glance at Shue's passed-out friend and declare her fine always gets a laugh.
- Funnier still, Shue abandons that friend for days, and the friend turns out to have gone home to New York.
- Roger Donaldson's late 80s, No Way Out and Cocktail, is listed; No Way Out is called perhaps the most rewatchable 80s action thriller.
- Cruise playing basketball is listed, part of a tour of his screen athletics from All the Right Moves to The Firm's running and tumbling.
- Cruise is judged undeniably a good athlete but the fit, uncoordinated crew-type rather than a varsity basketball player, compared with a high-school swimmer.
- The basketball scene has Cruise going perfect from the field; the Philip Seymour Hoffman scene is called a direct parody, and "Ryan's Law" is proposed as never going five for five in a movie basketball scene.
- The soundtrack did very well and made the Bobby McFerrin song a thing; it pairs 1950s rock callbacks with 80s songs like Kokomo.
- Asked for a final aged-best answer, the music is chosen.