Here’s a movie that will test the limits of your ability to watch other people having a good time.
“Hey Bartender” is ostensibly about the “cocktail revolution.” In director Douglas Tirola’s version of American tippling history, cocktails began in the 1880s, then Prohibition hit. After repeal, the film airily implies, it was mostly dullsville until, lucky us, along came the current “mixologists” with their fresh ingredients and top-shelf liquors.
That’s just one part of the hard sell going on here; the documentary features innumerable bartenders talking about cocktails at a rate that will glaze your eyes over faster than any drink on the menu.
In between there are two bartenders featured, both named Steve. One is a youngster, a former Marine striving to become a principal bartender at the swanky Employees Only in Greenwich Village. The other runs Dunville’s, an old-fashioned tavern in Connecticut.
Employees Only is presented as the ultimate of the new trend in bars, an elegant place with crowds of good-looking people sizing up one another over drinks festooned with rosebuds. The tavern-keeper, with his menu of beers and basics, is behind the times.
It seems not to occur to the people behind “Hey Bartender” that some of us have simple tastes, not to mention significant others. Not every drink need come with a pedigree or a flirtatious atmosphere.
By the end of the film, Dunville’s owner is making his own high-styled cocktail. Personally, I hope he stays away from the rosebuds.