coyoteeb

Most people are discerning movie viewers, they see either movies that come with high critical recommendation or those that interest them on a more personal level, while I on the other hand feel the need to see almost every movie released year in, year out. I cannot tell you how many hours I have wasted of my life sitting in a darkened cinema, numb to the celluloid atrocity going on before my eyes. I have experienced countless average, mediocre movies, each passing ninety relatively painless minutes quickly forgotten as I make my way home. Unfortunately, the most memorable kind of movies are the worst ones. They stay with you as a morbid reminder of the depths cinema can often plummet to.

Coyote Ugly centres on Violet Sanford, an aspiring songwriter from small town New Jersey. She writes typical Lilith Fair songs of love and angst, and dreams of hitting the big time, penning songs for the likes of Mariah or Whitney. When she moves to New York, in pursuit of her dream, things don't go as planned, leading her to take a job in the eponymous bar, the kind of place where the staff are models and love nothing more than impromptu cold water showers. Working there, Violet finds love, friendship and personal growth. So far, so nauseatingly juvenile. She of course finds fame also, and if you have seen the Lianne Rimes Can't Fight the Moonlight video, you already know how the movie will end.

Everything in this movie is painted in simplistic terms. The girls who work the bar have one characteristic each, appearing for the most part only when a raunchy dance number is required. The bar scenes themselves are flashy, colourful and brash, focussing as they do on either loud, obnoxious patrons or gyrating, perfectly-formed female bodies. Meanwhile, outside of work Violet's romance with Australian Kevin Donnelly keeps threatening to find its footing, a charming relationship on the verge of blossoming but thanks to the graceless script it never becomes anything more than girlish wish fulfilment. Indeed, the entire movie seems like it's been written by a pair of fourteen-year-old girls whose hormones are just kicking in.

All of this should not be remotely surprising given the man behind it all. Jerry Bruckheimer is a vile little sprite who epitomises all that has been wrong with Hollywood for the past two decades. He embraces the superficial, making movies for the cerebrally-challenged, which given his successful track record must surely encompass most of America. What makes this worse is that the tabloid press and mainstream movie media actually condone his moronic output, in the name of fun. Con Air, Face/Off and worst of all Armageddon are viewed as big-screen spectacles, no matter how idiotic each of them is.

With Coyote Ugly, Jerry Bruckheimer has discarded the testosterone-driven thrills of his past action oeuvre, in an attempt to reach across the ever-profitable gender-demographic and thankfully, unsurprisingly falls flat on his face. Despite the presence of an anonymous director-for-hire, Bruckheimer's fingerprints are all over Coyote. He is one of the only producers in Hollywood whose work gains the kind of familiarity normally reserved for directors. Everything is in place, a
visual-oriented film, a throw-away script, non-dimensional characters, excruciating attempts at humanising them. They are all here, in a movie drowning in its own vapidity.

The cast really do come in a distinct second place here in Jerry-land. Usually, there is an abundance of action to convince the audience that they are indeed watching real people with real emotions. When I saw Armageddon, some people around me were actually shedding tears over the laughably "sad" ending. The characters involved were nothing more than set-dressing, the emotional conflict so pathetically laboured and unreal. While Coyote Ugly certainly has its own kind of action, human drama is moved very much centre stage, giving the actors involved nothing to hide behind.

At the end of the day, all I wanted from this movie was a reasonably bearable ninety minutes, made all the more so by its unquestionably attractive cast. What I got was nausea brought on by boredom, alleviated only by the occasional showing of flesh. Coyote Ugly doesn't quite reach the depths of Showgirls but with its startling laziness and pure naivety it becomes just as unbearable.

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