Having turned fighter pilots and pool players into sex objects in Top Gun and The Color of Money, Tom Cruise attempted to do the same service for, er, bartenders in this romantic drama. You'd better believe it. Cruise learns all about the meaning of life by mixing drinks, with instruction from Bryan Brown's veteran barman. Admittedly, Cruise's technique is pretty impressive; he juggles with bottles, jiggles his behind and makes his female customers drunk with desire. But then along comes Elisabeth Shue, who makes him reassess his lifestyle. Cue lots of serious dialogue. Perhaps the best one can say for this bland concoction mixed by agents and the studio executives is that every bartender in Hollywood wants to be Tom Cruise and that suffices as an ironic subtext. Fans of Paul Verhoeven's pitiful Showgirls might like to check out Gina Gershon with her clothes on.

After being discharged from the Army, Brian Flanagan moves back to Queens and takes a job in a bar run by Doug Coughlin, who teaches Brian the fine art of bar-tending. Brian quickly becomes a patron favorite with his flashy drink-mixing style, and Brian adopts his mentor's cynical philosophy on life and goes for the money.