...wholly vapid, banal, harebrained flick from first-time director David McNally and action producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
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Can a sweet, young, innocent girl from South Amboy, New Jersey, make it as a songwriter in the big, ugly, corrupt city of New York and still maintain her sweet innocence? You bet. In the movies anything can happen. At least that's the premise of this wholly vapid, banal, harebrained flick from first-time director David McNally and action producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("Top Gun," "Days of Thunder," "Con Air," "Armageddon," "The Rock"). Bruckheimer also produced "Gone in Sixty Seconds," making his record for the year 2000 complete.
Piper Perabo stars as a naive waitress, Violet Sanford, who quits her job in a pizza parlor to try her hand at the Big Apple. She shops her tape around to music agencies all over the city, who turn her down flat without even listening to her songs. Surprise; she has no agent. She moves into a dumpy apartment, loses her tape to a young fellow she thinks is a club manager, panics at an open-mike competition, and comes home to find her new pad vandalized. And that's only her first day!
I was sure at this point that if the filmmakers had really tried their best, and I had supreme confidence they would, they'd come up with even more inane clichés. I wasn't disappointed. Violet applies for work at the Coyote Ugly Bar.
The Coyote Ugly is a joint where the girls dance, sort of, sing, sort of, and tend bar, sort of. Her task is to wear a skimpy outfit and be ogled by a roomful of rowdy, half-drunk, male patrons while ostensibly pouring drinks and taking in money. Great work if you can get it. The film is supposed to be brash and hip, but it has the distinction of not presenting a single moment that rings true.
The guy who took Violet's tape, an Australian fry cook and aspiring dancer named Kevin O'Donnell (Adam Garcia), quickly becomes her romantic interest. Violet and Kevin lie on the hood of his car and look up at the stars. (Find any guy in real life who'd let someone sit on the hood of his car!) She auctions him off at the bar to raise $250 she owes the bar owner, Lil (Maria Bello), for dousing a fire marshal. (Trust me, that bit makes no more sense in the film than it sounds here.) She helps Kevin load fish on the docks. (He holds down a multitude of jobs, mainly to allow the director to get his camera out of the bar for a moment.) She quells a riot at the bar by singing a song. (Don't you find that always helps when a brawl's going on?) Then, she sings to herself on the rooftop of her apartment building. Maybe this entire movie was supposed to be taken as a farce, and I completely missed the point. I certainly missed any sign of a story line.
Need I mention that John Goodman plays Violet's father, Bill? He's a toll taker at a bridge crossing, and he's a regular guy. He's also overweight, protective, and single, points that get minor play in the film. Otherwise, he's pretty much wasted in a part that requires little of his comedic or dramatic skills. Beyond Goodman, the rest of the cast is made up of relative unknowns whose careers will probably be neither helped nor hindered by their roles in this negligible film. Perabo ("Rocky and Bullwinkle") and Garcia make an attractive couple. What more can be said?
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[release]6039[/release]