Movie Review by Nigel A. Messenger
Starring: Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia, Maria Bello, Tyra Banks, Izabella Miko
Director: David McNally
Take a bunch of incredibly attractive, young, pretty and mostly unknown actresses, throw in a fairly simple storyline, add producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s, mix it all up and you get a very watchable, although totally undemanding movie, called COYOTE UGLY.
The movie is the story of an unknown songwriter, Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo), who goes off to the big city to try to get her songs recognised and get a big star to sing them. She has no confidence to sing them herself even though in private she has a good singing voice. She sends her tapes off to various record companies then goes about getting a job to support herself.
She gets a job serving behind a bar called Coyote Ugly, but only having seen it in the daytime she has no idea that this bar is a little different. The bar attracts huge crowds every night, it’s choice of drink is limited to say the least, but it plays good music on the jukebox and its secret for success is the girls that work behind the bar.
All extremely attractive, the dress code is sexy, very sexy. Short tight t-shirts, beautiful hair and great figures – you get the idea! They also have one other weapon to tempt the customers, their attitude. They dance on the bar, spray the customers with water and throw buckets of ice over any troublemakers. Violet has to fit in or lose her job, and its good money, so she does eventually.
There’s love interest for Violet in the form of Adam Garcia and family in the form of her father John Goodman.
As you’ve probably guessed COYOTE UGLY is full of cliches, but there again, so is life! This is not a bad movie although most critics will hate it. It’s not mentally demanding in any way whatsoever, but it’s not boring, because it’s visually stunning, at least from a male perspective. From anyone’s perspective though, the film is well made and it’s got a great music soundtrack.
COYOTE UGLY is reminiscent of one of the early Tom Cruise vehicles – COCKTAIL – which certainly contributed together with TOP GUN to make him a huge star. I’m sure COYOTE UGLY will do the same for the girls who star in it, in particular Piper Perabo, Izabella Miko and Bridget Moynahan, all who are stunningly attractive and have real screen presence. They now need to get parts in movies with more substance, or at least in a successful teen comedy like AMERICAN PIE and the future is theirs. Out of the ‘four out of six’ rating of this movie, two marks are purely for the girls!
