21-year-old Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo) has come to the Big Apple in order to pursue her dream of becoming a successful songwriter. But it is not her songwriting that is getting her noticed. Violet has taken up a part time job as a barmaid at New York's hottest new club, the Coyote Ugly, where the girls spend more time dancing outrageously on the bar than actually serving drinks behind it. Coyote Ugly is either a girls' film for boys or a boys' film for girls. Either way, it's undemanding tosh that remixes 80s "classics" like Fame, Cocktail, Flashdance and Dirty Dancing for the turn of the century. The main attraction is Coyote Ugly itself, a raucous New York bar run by tough-on-the-outside softie Lil (Maria Bello) where the drinks and the customers are straight and the girls who serve have to be skilled at lightning-fast mental maths when adding up complex rounds, as well as a sort of clothed stripping as they line-dance, karaoke-wail or pole-hug on top of the often-flaming bar itself. The plot is a trifle about a shrinking violet--actually called Violet--(Piper Perabo) who comes to the big city to do one-better than her showbiz near-miss deceased mother and make it as a songwriter, but is paralysed by a stage-fright she only overcomes after a couple of energetic nights working the crowds at Coyote Ugly. There's the usual on-off romance, with a sensitive Australian bloke (Adam Garcia) and some soap with an estranged Dad (always-good-value John Goodman) who is hospitalised at just the right moment to prompt a family revelation and a reunion that pays off with a not-unexpected happy ending. It all boils down to a 12-certificate teenage magazine romance, set in what amounts to a nudie bar where there's no actual nudity. Both the men in the heroine's life seriously question whether writhing suggestively for drunken lechers is an empowering activity for an independent girl, but since that's more or less the film's strongest visual effect, the script has to come down on the side of the girls--if not the customers. The supporting babes--Russian blonde Cammie (Izabella Miko), ferocious brunette Rachel (Bridget Moynahan) and upwardly-mobile Zoe (Tyra Banks)--gyrate and model cast-off gear, but make less of an impression than Melanie Lynskey (the "other one" from Heavenly Creatures) as the devoted, slightly dumpy best friend back home. Like most Jerry Bruckheimer products, it's slickly put-together, at once exciting and predictable, cut like a commercial or a pop promo, directed by a non-entity (David McNally), fantastical yet blue-collar "real" and self-destructs in the mind after viewing. --Kim Newman Synopsis From hit-making producer Jerry Bruckheimer ( Armageddon, Pearl Harbour) comes Coyote Ugly, the intoxicating romatic comedy starring an unbeatable cast of hot, new stars including Piper Perabo ( Rocky and Bulwinkle), Maria Bello ( Payback) and Adam Garcia. Moving to New York to pursue her dream of becoming a famous songwriter, Violet Sanford (Perabo) finds herself desperate and broke. Through a twist of fate, the shy, innocent Violet lands a job as one of the barmaids at the hottest nightclub in town - the down and dirty, wild and fun "Coyote Ugly". Pouring drinks and overflowing with attitude, the "Coyotes" spend more time on top of the bar than behind it, tantalising the standing-room-only crowd with their outrageous antics. It's one wild adventure for a small town girl chasing a dream in the big city.