Coyote Ugly

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Here's a simple schematic to understand Coyote Ugly: its director made an ad for Budweiser; its producer (Jerry Bruckheimer) made Flashdance and Top Gun; its stars include supermodels Tyra Banks, Bridget Moynahan, Izabella Miko. The storyline involves scantily-clad female bartenders spraying water on themselves and their frat-graduate customers. And the acting must compete with lurid, drunken cheers.

The film is based on a real Manhattan bar bearing the same name, presumably impossible to enter because of crowds hoping for the on-screen ambience: sexy women purring, cooing, climbing, stretching, dancing, singing, and giggling, all to the delight of their male clientele. In the background hovers a dim Flashdancey plot about a new bartender (Piper Perabo) with hopes of making it big in the music world while netting her ideal man (Adam Garcia). Acting as her blue-collar pop, John Goodman squeezes in some laughs, but this movie is all about the libido.