Coyote Ugly

Coyote Ugly
Cast: Piper Perabo
Studio: Touchstone
Rating: 4/10

If Coyote Ugly were any worse than it actually is, it would be good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t maintain the bold lack of coherence that would have prevented it from collapsing into a sugary mess. Promoted as a raunchy, bawdy bar movie, Coyote Ugly instead comes across wanting to be a fable about holding onto your dreams, staying true to yourself, and other gag-worthy sentiments which should appeal to the readers of YM magazine, who will no doubt flock to this movie in giggling hordes.

Piper Perabo (The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle) plays Violet Sanford, a waitress from South Amboy, New Jersey who leaves her family and friends behind, including Melanie Lynskey as Gloria, Violet’s inexplicably stereotypical Jersey-style ditz of a girlfriend, to pursue her dreams of songwriting in New York City. People are mean to her, her seedy apartment is robbed, but she stumbles upon a job opportunity at the trendy bar Coyote Ugly, and suddenly all of her planets are lined up. Mario Bello (ER ) plays Lil, the saucy but wise bar mother who takes a chance on the kid and quickly renames her “Jersey.” Her coyote cohorts (Bridget Moynihan, Izabella Miko, and Tyra Banks) dance on top of the bar in tight pants to the delight of the patrons, mostly frat boys and guys with big necks. The scenes in the bar when the women are sliding and writhing to an unforgivably bad and dated soundtrack are jaw-droppingly shameless. There are actually hair-whipping-around sound effects, not unlike the sounds heard in a martial arts movie. There needed to be more scenes of dancing mayhem. In this movie, the bar suffers from underexposure. The film, however, suffers from an overdose of plot.

Though women are central to Coyote Ugly, the actors who emerge from this film with the least amount of this mess stuck to them are Adam Garcia as Kevin, Violet’s Australian love interest, and John Goodman, who plays her overprotective toll-booth attendant father. Both bring a level of talent that this movie doesn’t really deserve. Everyone else is eye candy, as evidenced by the dancing stand-ins doing the actual shimmying for the supermodels.

Ultimately, Coyote Ugly is almost embarrassingly difficult to completely dislike. Almost, but not quite.

+ David Kern


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