Director: David McNally
Starring: Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia, Maria Bello, Tyra Banks, Melanie Lynskey, John Goodman, Adam Alexi-Malle, Izabella Miko, Bridget Moynahan

- Reviewed by Linda

Remember a few years ago when a wave of children in Japan were hospitalized with seizures from watching Pokémon cartoons? Occasionally a character's eyes would flash, strobe-like, causing the rapt child brain's to malfunction and throw the kid into a fit of convulsions. Well, I think the preview for Coyote Ugly had a similar brain-altering effect on me. Whenever the commercial came on TV, my pupils would dilate, and my jaw would fall open slack in response to the MTV-style rock-n-roll editing and the images of model-esque bartender chicks gyrating on countertops while hosing down the male clientele. By the time the movie opened, a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go see Coyote Ugly, and my uncontrollable robotic response was, "Yes... Yes, I do."

Of course Coyote Ugly was one of those movies where if you've seen the preview, you've pretty much seen the whole movie. I guess I had a secret desire that it would be a Showgirls for the new millennium, but alas, it wasn't even really so bad that it was good. It was just, well, lame.

Piper Perabo (hey, wasn't she an Olympic skier?) plays our heroine Violet, a girl from New Jersey who goes to New York to make a living as a songwriter. She'd be a singer, but she has stage fright, which, we are told more than once, was inherited from her angelic dead mother. We see her humble background, and know that she comes from good, honest stock: she lives with her working class dad (John Goodman) and is the light of his life, and she has a lifelong best friend (Melanie Lynskey), who inexplicably has a really thick Jersey accent, while Violet has none. Hmmm. Once they are introduced, dad and friend are left in the dust, because there are lots of hotties to meet in New York.

Piper Perabo has two expressions: either her face is lit up in a wholesome Julia Roberts toothy smile, or else her whole body racked with bad posture and she looks like she is going to burst into tears. Violet's life is obviously a rollercoaster, as we repeatedly witness her flip-flopping between the two emotions. Somehow, after two days in New York, she hasn't become a successful songwriter, so after eavesdropping on some Wild Girls in an all-night diner, she finds out there is going to be an opening at a bar called Coyote Ugly. 

Maria Bello, who should never have quit ER, plays The Boss, who gives Violet a test run one night at the raunchy bar. Violet's t-shirt gets ripped, she screws up some orders, and heck, she's too shy to dance and grind on top of the bar, so she gets sent home early... but lo! Violet breaks up a fight between two drunks on the way out, and The Boss seems to think that is the most amazing thing she has ever seen, so she gets the job.

Well! You can imagine the rest... Violet gets a cute boyfriend, an Australian with a secret past, who gets to take off his shirt more than once ("He is SO HOT!!!" squealed a girl in the audience), and who provides moral support for his girl. Violet blossoms, as one night, with the power of her voice, she literally stops an all-out barroom riot by leaping on the counter and singing along with Blondie on the jukebox (I've heard that works every time!). And the movie culminates with Violet getting to sing one of her songs on stage with a full band, as well as with a new-found confidence. As the inspirational corporate workplace poster says, "Remember, NOTHING is too good to be true!" <curtain closes>

You can see that this story was ripe... RIPE to be a Kamp Komedy Klassic. But a movie has to be overall watchable to attain that status. Despite the occasional scenes of babelicious chicks in skin-tight outfits stomping on the bar-top to Charlie Daniels' "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" or dumping buckets of water on each other and whipping their wet hair around to Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" (yes, the song with the classic lyric "You've got the peaches, I've got the cream!")... Coyote Ugly was, well, um, boring. 

The acting and script were just too mediocre, and the cheesy parts just weren't cheesy enough to make Coyote Ugly as bad (in the most enjoyable way) as it really could've been. Ultimately, we were just left with another silly MTV video stretched out to a full-length movie, when it could have been so much more. <*sigh of disappointment*>

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