Hey folks, Harry here in Madrid on Vacation... can´t help myself though... I love beiñg able to type words with Ñ with that cool thiñg on top of it!!! You know what I mean¿ Of course you do... weeeelllll, anywho, seems like our mafioso connection in Chi-town saw one heck of a blind moonshine flick, if´n ya get my meaning, so go with the foreknowledge that you´ll need to be 3 sheets to the wind before consuming this rancid steak... awww shucks... can´t be that bad...
Hey Harry, Capone in Chicago here with my review of an early runner in the Worst Movie of 2000 contest, COYOTE UGLY.
I wasn't even going to send in a review for this film, but after seeing COYOTE UGLY last night, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly over the weekend unless I warned you about it, in case there was even the tiniest tick of a thought in your head about seeing this film.
I love the commercials for COYOTE UGLY because they’re honest and do a great job of summing up the nothing story that is this movie. The ads make it clear that this movie is nothing more than a PG-13 tease film: five stunning women working and dancing (not stripping!) in a bar. Why clutter up such a perfect concept with a plot? The five leading ladies (newcomer Piper Perabo, club owner Maria Bello, model Tyra Banks, Polish actress Izabella Miko, and Bridget Moynahan), and of the film are tailor-made for magazine covers and web sites around the globe, guaranteeing the film much more publicity than, say, SPACE COWBOYS.
COYOTE UGLY is a film by, about, and for dumb-asses. It’s for people thick enough who still think that people just pick up their lives and move to New York to become a songwriter. What songwriter doesn’t want to sing their own songs? They explain that away with some trumped up claim of stagefright. Gee, I wonder if one of the great dramatic turning points of the film will be her overcoming her fear of performing. And what self-respecting singer doesn’t perform their own songs? Well that question in answered here with a cameo by LeAnn Rimes, but I digress (as I did often while watching this movie).
The film begins with our heroine Violet quitting her job at a New Jersey pizza place and moving out of the home she shares with her father (John Goodman, the only human in this film). She moves into this dive of an apartment in Chinatown, makes a demo tape, and goes building to building trying to pass her tape to different record companies. Oh yeah, to complete her New York experience, Violet is robbed. To make money under her inevitable big break, she gets a job as a bartender/eye candy a trendy bar called Coyote Ugly, run by Bello, whose character I’m pretty sure was supposed to be a lesbian but they never address it directly. Violets also meets an Australian fry cook named Kevin (Adam Garcia), who’s a big wuss.
The film does maintain a certain kinetic energy, especially during the spirited “dance” numbers at the Coyote Ugly bar. But all I could think of during those scenes was what a older friend of mine once told me about filming dance numbers in musicals. He said you have to show the whole body (or people will think the actors/dancers are faking it), and you have to present the sequence with as few edits as possible to maintain a flow. COYOTE UGLY takes the opposite approach. Music video-style editing makes me believe some of the actresses we’re responsible for their dancing. A minor point, but another reason I hated this film.
The biggest problem with COYOTE UGLY is that nothing makes sense, and for a movie that has very little to say, it uses a lot of energy to make its non-point. I can’t remember the last time a film made such an effort to bore the hell out of me. Piper Perabo is a second-rate Julia Roberts wannabe with bad posture and a bobbing neck and big eyes, all of which combines to make us believe she’s a shy and unsure woman. Adam Garcia as her boyfriend is, as I mentioned before, a big wuss. The good news about COYOTE UGLY belongs to first-time director David McNally, who has nowhere to go but up from here.
There are bits of FLASHDANCE here, but without the darkness and stylization of that film. There are bits of COCKTAIL here, but only with regards to the bottle flipping sections of the movie. No, COYOTE UGLY is a genre unto itself, a film that managed to bore me with images of beautiful women. I never thought that would be possible.
A very sleepy,
Capone
