The Ultimate Product Placement

Rating: 4/10 (5 July 2014)

"Coyote Ugly" is a real bar in New York; the name is presumably an ironic allusion to the fact that its female staff are all very attractive. I wonder how many other real bars in America have been able to benefit from the ultimate product placement of having an entire Hollywood movie dedicated to their activities.
Violet Sanford is a young woman from South Amboy, New Jersey who moves to New York to follow her dream of becoming a songwriter. The film is clearly based on the dubious theory that songwriters need to live in big cities because no songs worth listening to have ever been written in small towns. (It is also based upon the assumption that "Violet" was a plausible Christian name for girls of Piper Perabo's generation. Well, perhaps it was in New Jersey, but in the seventies the only Violets in Britain were those queuing up for their old age pension). Violet quickly discovers that, in the songwriting trade, success does not always come quickly and realises that she will need another source of income to tide her over until her genius is recognised by the music industry. She therefore gets a job at the Coyote Ugly Saloon.
"Coyote Ugly" reminded me of a slightly later film, "Burlesque". In that film Christina Aguilera also plays a rather naive young girl who leaves her small-town home to settle in the big city and who ends up working in a rather risqué establishment. Lil, the bar owner, also bears certain similarities to the character played by Cher in "Burlesque". The main difference is that the Coyote Ugly Saloon is not actually a strip club; taking their clothes off is not something the Coyote Girls are expected to do. If, however, they are not strippers, neither are they barmaids as that term is more generally understood. They are encouraged to flirt with male customers, to dance on the bar, to take part in wet T-shirt contests and to behave in a generally raunchy way.
The film charts Violet's rise to fame not only as a bartender but also as a singer-songwriter, and there is a subplot chronicling her romance with a handsome young Australian named Kevin. Actually, "handsome" seems an inadequate adjective to describe Adam Garcia. He achieves the rare feat for a Hollywood leading man of being even prettier than his leading lady. The film-makers seem to have had the cynical idea of making a romantic comedy (normally regarded as a genre which appeals more to women than to men) which would be equally popular with both sexes. Garcia would provide eye-candy for the ladies, while for the men there would be the sight of various sexy girls parading their charms in tight- fitting T-shirts and jeans. Among Violet's co-workers is the gorgeous supermodel Tyra Banks, at this period trying to carve out a cinema career for herself. (Tyra's bid for screen stardom did not prove a great success, but at least she was no worse than some of her fellow supers, such as Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Elle Macpherson, who also tried their hand at acting around the same time).
Good looks, whether of the masculine or feminine variety, are not always enough to ensure the success of a film, but "Coyote Ugly" did relatively well at the box-office. The critics, however, were less impressed, and I must say that my sympathies are with them. The plot is weak and clichéd, and the acting is undistinguished. Both Perabo and Garcia are forgettable; about the only one of the cast to make anything of an impression is John Goodman as Violet's father Bill, like most Goodman characters an amiable slob. Even the sight of Tyra Banks in a T-shirt cannot make "Coyote Ugly" anything more than a below-average rom-com. 4/10