Coyote Ugly

Release Date: Aug 19th, 2000

Cast :

Director: David McNally 

Never has there been a more demographically fitting movie, than Coyote Ugly, this is a movie tailor made for the Britney Spears/N’Sync set of pre-pubescent males and females, who need nothing more than an inspirational, yet unoriginal story, and some tantalizing eye candy, in order to make their entertainment dollar seem well spent

It seems as if the director and screenwriter wanted to play “How many rehashed plot devices can we cram in between scenes of scantily clad women serving alcohol”. Buckle up, because here’s the outline of what happens outside the bar:

Violet is a girl from New Jersey who works in a pizza parlor and dreams of making it big as a singer. (cue obligatory “I Will Survive” scene)  Her mother passed away, before she could realize her own dreams, and left her in the care of her father, who cannot seem to effectively function without her.  Cut to “the big city” where Violet attempts to get noticed by going to record companies, making tapes, etc etc, until, out of necessity and frustration, she ends up working at the namesake bar in the title (“because Cheers was taken” is a classic dialogue example indeed, David Mamet could not have written anything better.  Anyhow, moving onward, of course Violet has a cute little meeting with a boy (involving the wholly original mistaken identity twist) followed by the resistance, persistence, affair, misunderstanding, resolution etc etc.   Meanwhile, there’s the obstacle of her singing career, the stage fright (with a resolution stolen straight from Little Voice) not to mention all of the typical fitting in cliché’s in the bar itself. There are many more too numerous and unnecessary to mention. The well-choreographed energetic musical montages are the only things that break up this onslaught of monotonous predictability. Coyote Ugly tries to be an inspirational and motivational story about overcoming fears and making in the big time.  However someone decided that in lieu of an intelligent, original story, they would just throw in some MTV style musical montages and dancing girls, then fill in the blanks with brainless contrived ideas listed above.  It is also mind boggling how the makers felt that a movie marketed in this manner, deserved a PG-13 rating.  This flaw is the fault of either the marketing department who misrepresented it, or the makers who decided to tone it down and aim lower on the demographic level.

The obvious lead and focus is Perabo, who at least gets to show a little more (both physically, and dramatically) than she did in her previous effort, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.  She is adorable, innocent and calmly sexy, but still fails to display any ounce of ability.  This character did not seem like much of a stretch for her, so it’s hard to say if she has a future.  Hopefully, she will at least exercise better script and story selection in her next project, unless she wants to become the next Jenny McCarthy, instead of the next Julia Roberts.  Adam Garcia, as boyfriend de jour, is apropos in his role, and may give the adolescent girls another poster boy with an accent to replace their Heath Ledger posters with.  All other performances are faceless and filler, save a nice, but desperate, comic relief performance from John Goodman (please, no more half naked bar dancing scenes though).

Ultimately, Coyote Ugly is a harmless, energetic, yet empty and unoriginal vision of what Flashdance succeeded at doing.  The music will pump life into a story that steals from every inspirational movie ever made.  The script will make any with an IQ over 60 cringe and make the audience want to scream “Shut up and get back to the music, dancing and girls” Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler once stated (paraphrasing) that if there was a button that would stimulate our innermost desires, we’d all be pushing it constantly.  Jerry Bruckheimer seems to produce movies that strive to hold this button down for the running time that we are in the theater.  Most of the time, as in Top Gun, Bad Boys, Armageddon, The Rock and more recently, Gone in Sixty Seconds, these appeals are made to the male species by featuring lots of explosions, car chases, fast editing, and mindless scripting.  Every so often, as in Flashdance and Dangerous Minds, he does attempt to appeal to the female audience, by tapping into that drive to succeed, overcome and be independent.  This time he has drug David McNally down with him. Occasionally, Jerry's formulas work, but usually, his results are little more than harmless, empty efforts, which never have any lingering effect. This is one of those empty films, appealing only to teenage girls, with dreams of having a fun job while struggling to make it, and to teenage boys, who turn off their brains and power up their already overactive hormones. Shame on you Mr's Bruckheimer and McNally for disillusioning America's youth as to what their search for the American Dream should be. ($$ out of $$$$)

Agree? Disagree, Questions? Comments?

Tell Me Here

Also see my reviews at:

Cast information and links courtesy of

Go To Reel Rambling Page