The Goodman, the mediocre and Coyote Ugly

Rating: 5/10 (17 February 2020)

I had free cinema tickets in the year 2000 and my choices were this or Disney's Dinosaur. It was a daytime screening and I couldn't make a later screening with more choice and the tickets were expiring that week. Dinosaur was the choice; a mediocre film following Disney's pantheon of midas touched 90s films. Why is this relevant? It was better than Coyote Ugly.
Coyote Ugly isn't bad per se, just a bit meh. The film is a fairly generic story about a small town girl who moves to the big city to become a songwriter and ends up working in a rowdy bar, maybe not unlike Hooters. Inbetween she meets a hunky Australian love interest. It's sort of a comedy-cum-Romance-cum-music film-cum-bar room drama. I'm all for hybrid films, but this film doesn't do any one thing particularly well apart from the music (the songs are good). Piper Perabo is unfortunately obviously lip synching and it just feels like a thinly veiled promotional video for then largely unknown LeAnn Rimes.
The romantic plot is just too predictable and a bit tacked on. The bar scenes are good and capture some of the excitement. Unfortunately, it isn't as groundbreaking or thrilling as say corny Tom Cruise vehicle Cocktail.
The best thing in the film is John Goodman. His charisma and natural humour is always fun to watch and of course playing a Dad character is a natural fit as he's been doing it to perfection for years.
So all in all: good photography, good music, John Goodman being his usual charming self, boring plot and it never really escapes from feeling like an extended music video.