In many ways, actually, 'Coyote Ugly' from personal opinion didn't even come close to good.Feel-good films when done right are very entertaining and heart-warming. However 'Coyote Ugly', while with its moments, has too many faults that are at worst ineptly done to succeed as a feel-good film.Starting with 'Coyote Ugly's' good things, the best asset by far is the soundtrack, which is quite brilliant and deserved a far better film. The LeAnn Rimes numbers "The Right Kind of Wrong", "Please Remember" and "Can't Fight the Moonlight" particularly stand out of the songs, as does the classic Elvis Presley standard "Can't Help Falling in Love", one of the most beautiful all-time great romantic songs. The score is very nice too.While the acting wasn't great at all, there is one good performance and it is that of John Goodman, who is an entertaining and amiably likable father figure. Some of the camera work is quite smart too.On the other hand, while the music itself is of really high-quality it does feel too constant with little break and like there could have been less, there were definitely scenes that would have benefited much more without it or at least from music with a less intrusive approach. Too many scenes feel like amateurishly edited and lazily choreographed, with a lot of gloss and either being overblown or lacking energy, music videos, which is a huge problem in a film full of them and with a wafer-thin story that feels like an excuse to string these scenes together.Also hugely problematic is how cliché-ridden and stereotypical it is. Not just the story, which has every done to death cliché in the book that everything feels forced and predictable with ridiculous and laughable dramatic elements with little chemistry and no substance or emotional connection whatsoever. We are also talking about the characters in a film loaded with every possible stereotype, another problem being that apart from Cammie and Bill very few of them are likable, with a difficult to relate to protagonist, and some add nothing to the film, Maria Bello's character is particularly useless and only there because the film "needed" the obligatory boss stereotype.Goodman aside, the performances are not great, or even good, at all. Adam Garcia is particularly bad, with an acting ability so limited it's almost non-existent and he feels out of place too. He doesn't even work as eye candy that well. Piper Perabo tries hard but too often lacks charisma and doesn't display a wide range of emotions with sudden shifts in character that undermine the character's growth. Everybody else is bland or annoying though Izabella Miko has moments of charm. Dialogue is painfully trite and thin throughout, while the direction lacks panache and flash. The film looks alright, especially in the colours, locations and the camera work, which show a lot of style, but cheapened by too much gloss and amateurish editing.Overall, there is a great soundtrack but 'Coyote Ugly' falls far short. 3/10 Bethany Cox

For me, "Coyote Ugly" is worth watching because of Piper Perabo (who plays Violet). I am a fan, having seen most of her films and every episode of "Covert Affairs". She's the spunky girl who follows her dreams. The story is reminiscent of "Flashdance". Violet is a small town girl who wants to become a songwriter and/or singer, but suffers from stage fright.In order to survive in New York City, she takes a bartending job at Coyote Ugly--a rowdy, high-energy joint where the girls are expected to dance provocatively on the bar, sell as many drinks as possible, and appear available--where she discovers her inner chutzpah.The soundtrack is immensely popular and the music helps drive the action. Violet's singing is dubbed by LeAnn Rimes, who makes an appearance on screen. The film has a competent cast including John Goodman, Maria Bello, and others who are fun to spot.Don't think too much while watching this film. Just relax and enjoy the music, the energy, and the formulaic story of a young woman learning to make it on her own.The name (of the bar) Coyote Ugly is a monument to the concept of getting mindlessly drunk.

I decided to watch this film because I admire the work of the young actress Piper Perabo, who has been so brilliant and charming as the lead character in the ongoing series COVERT AFFAIRS. The reason why she is called 'Piper' is not because she is a tropical bird who makes strange sounds in the jungle, but because she was named after the fifties movie actress Piper Laurie, remember her? But the reason why she looks so unusual is that she is half Norwegian and half Portuguese, a mixture so rare that we have never seen one before and may never see one again. She attended high school in Toms River, New Jersey, one of the small New Jersey towns I have actually been to long ago, strange that. (How many people have been to Toms River? If you have six fingers on one hand that's too many.) I first encountered her on screen in SLAP HER SHE'S FRENCH (2002, see my review), in which she and the whole film were equally hilarious. She was also in the wonderfully funny BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA (2008, see my review). So I thought I would jump from chihuahuas to coyotes and see what that was all about. Well, what a shock. All those girls dancing on the top of a bar in a Manhattan bar called Coyote Ugly, the girls themselves being called 'coyotes'! I got a DVD of what is called the extended cut, whatever was extended. This is in some ways what is called a chick flic, but not really. Perabo plays a good little girl from the tiny South Amboy, New Jersey (is that an in joke of some kind?), who gets the nickname 'Jersey'. She loves her dad who is a widower, excellently played by John Goodman, who has just the right sentimental sad sack tone for the part. Perfect casting there. She falls for the quirky Australian actor Adam Garcia, who has just the right amount of whimsy and works at a grill, so that is the love story part of it. She moves into the most terrible filthy and collapsing apartment in China Town, but seems to love it. But it's the bar that makes your jaw drop far below floor level. The girls cavort on the bar from where they throw buckets of water and buckets of ice cubes all over the patrons, and the patrons just love it. Everybody drinks bottles of whiskey and it gets poured all over the counter and the people too. Perabo wants to be a song-writer, like her deceased mother, but is too shy to sing her own songs in public. She takes a job as a coyote to pay the rent. The girls are all dressed in as little as possible and, as the woman owner puts it, 'must give the impression of being available while not really being available'. Perabo slowly warms up to this, which is not exactly her thing. There are numerous ups and downs, not to mention sideways wriggles, and Perabo is forced to sing to the patrons of the bar to stop a violent fight, which means she has sung in public for the first time by accident. Eventually after endless rebuffs she gets someone to listen to one of her own songs. There is a lot of very good satire of the music business in the film. Perabo's father comes to the bar unexpectedly one night and is shocked, and this makes for problems, as he says he never thought he could be ashamed of her but he is. She gets fired but then gets rehired. She realizes she is not a natural coyote. The pure unrestrained anarchy of the bar is really something to see and behold, though pardon me if I don't go searching for such a place, for as much as I can cope with anarchy, I really don't want to be soaked with buckets of water all evening and forced to drink that much whiskey. I'll give it a miss. Nor do I necessarily think girls should be demeaning themselves by wriggling on bar tops. It goes against my male feminist principles. But still! It's a movie! And there she is, Piper Perabo with her girlish smile, surviving it all somehow, for after all she has a big future ahead of her as the world's cutest super-spy in COVERT AFFAIRS (to be reviewed).

the beginning of the movie was pretty good. i liked how they showed life in new york- her first disappointments and her first days in the bar.. but later the story gets predictable and cheap. the bad scenes and mistakes: when Cammie (is that here name?) started stripping in the middle of a baseball game?! w.t.f.?! i mean- it's her job to dance in the bar, but why must she act like a stripper on a regular day?! that just looked like a stupid scene from a porno movie in one moment there are happening only bad things- violet looses her job, her boyfriend, her father is in hospital..blah blah..the usual height of a movie, and then- oh! it's a miracle! everything is perfect! her boyfriend wanted to move to Chicago, but he changed his mind and comes to rescue her show! i hate when they make such predictable stories.. and it's getting boring with all those- I'm moving, you're moving, but in the last second we both change our minds, because we know we're made for each other! the dialogs are really bad.. especially those which should be touching and deep- in the end..and nobody there seems to have a real character- everyone's mind is changing like the weather- violet's, her dad's, her bosses, her boyfriend's.. it's maybe a good movie for teenage girls, but if you're over 18, then better don't watch it.