August 3–10, 2000

movie shorts

Coyote Ugly

In Coyote Ugly, director David McNally’s Flashdance update (both films produced by infamous crowd-pleaser Jerry Bruckheimer), everything is feverishly stylized. At the titular East Village saloon, the neon is bright, the cowboy boots are expensive, the T-shirts are wet and the post-feminist females (Maxim covergirls Izabella Miko, Bridget Moynihan and Tyra Banks — on screen for five minutes, before she goes to, um, law school) dance on and tend the bar. Meanwhile, the jukebox booms country-pop-rock (Kid Rock, Def Leppard, Uncle Kracker, Charlie Daniels, Don Henley) and the patrons, according to bar owner Maria Bello, are animal-like "kiddies." Virginal aspiring songwriter Piper Perabo moves from NJ to NYC to "make it," and starts working at the bar, where she learns some lessons, mainly, to be herself and risk love with Australian pretty boy Adam Garcia, or something like that. The movie is surprisingly not offensive for about 30 minutes (the girls do "handle" the boys and the film doesn’t punish or condescend to them for doing so), then descends quickly into worn-out romance, family melodrama (Perabo’s good-hearted tollbooth clerk dad is John Goodman, her mom is dead and sainted) and star-is-born stuff. No surprises here: girls in tight clothes dancing on a bar with a loud soundtrack.

—Cindy Fuchs